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POETRY    AND    DREAMS 


BY 


F.    C.    PRESCOTT 


I 


Boston 

The  Four  Seas  Com  pan  v 

1919 


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Copyright,  1912,  by 
Richard  G.  Badger 


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V"i/w-iv,V    --" 


The    I'oiir  Spas   Pro«« 
nnsjiin.  Ma»!i..  II.  S.  A. 


Poetry  and  Dreams 


POETRY  is  proverbially  difficult  to  define  and  explain. 
The  reason  for  this  difficulty  seems  to  lie  partly 
in  the  subject  itself  and  partly  in  our  attitude  toward 
it.  The  subject  is  indeed  deep  and  complex.  The 
production  of  poetry  is  still,  as  it  has  always  been,  a  jrnys- 
terIous_grocess,  even  to  the  poets  themselves;  while  even  the 
most  devoted  and  enlightened  readers  of  poetry  still  find 
mystery  in  its  action  and  eflfect.  .  Poetry,  as  SJjelley  be-  ^^ 
lievedj^  "acts..^iiL-a    divine    and    unapprehended    manner,  i 

beyond _^and  above  consciousness.^'*  Many  poets — ^ToT  ex-  .^^^e^P^ 
ample  Shelley  and  Wordsworth  —  in  defining  poetry  resort  ,.  jOfr^" 
to  poetical  figures;  others,  like  our  poet  of  democracy, 
avoid  definition  scrupulously.  "Let  me  not  dare,"  says 
Walt  Whitman,  "to  attempt  a  definition  of  poetry,  nor 
answer  the  question  what  it  is.  'Like  religipn,  Igve,  nature, 
while  these  terms  are  indispensable,  and  we  all  give  suffi- 
ciently accurate  meaning  to  them,  in  my  opinion  no  definition 
that  has  ever  been  made  sufficiently  encloses  the  name 
poetry."^  Perhaps,  however,  mystery  in  the  subject  en- 
genders superstilion,  and  leads  .aiR.  to  regard  poetry  with 
supine  reverence  and  wonder.,.  We  should  indeed  worship 
our  great  poets,  as  the  men  of  old  did  their  bards  and  proph- 
ets; but  not  abjectly,  as  savages  do  their  medicine  men. 
We  speak  of  the  "divine"  Shakespeare,  perhaps  knowing 
too  little  of  this  poet's  life  to  recognize  how  much  he  shared 
our  common  humanity.  We  call  poetr^^^^^iyine,  wliich  is\\- 
another  way  of  saying  that  it  is  still  inexplicable  to  us.y 
All  things  are  of  God;  and  in  the  subject  of  poetry,  as  in 
others,  our  increasing  knowledge  should  lead  us  to  clearer 
understanding.  We  need  make  no  apology,  then,  for 
attempting  to  approach  this  mystery. 

\/'  There  is  some  resemblajice  and  unexplained  relation  be- 
tween PjQPliy  ijndjdxe^rns.  The  poet  and  the  dreamer  are 
son. 'how  alike  in  their  faculty  of._idsion.   NThis  relation  is 

'  Deft    se  of  Poetry,  ed.  Cook,  p.  11. 

^  A  Bi  :kward  Glance  o'er  Travel'd  Roads. 


4903;)] 


Ji 


4  '   "''''''•' Poetry 'dhd-Dreams 

indicated  by  the  uses  of  language,  which,  spontaneously 
expressing  the  sense  of  mankind,  often  revea'  psychological 
trulli  not  otherwise  readily  discovered.  I'he  poets  have 
traditionally  been  dreamers,  from  the  "dreamer  Merlin"  to 
the  latest  youth  who  "dreams"  and  rhymes.  The  poet 
writes  of  "dreams  which  wave  before  the  half-shut  eye."' 
I  The  word  dream  is  thus  constantly  used  by  critics  in  describ- 
^  ing  the  poet's  work.  ."The  true  poet,"  says  Charles  Lamb, 
"dreams  being  awake. "''/Poetry  is  defined  by  Sully  Prud- 
homme  as  "le  reve  par  lequel  I'homme  aspire  a  une  vie 
superieure," '  The  poets  themselves  in  different  times 
and  different  countries  testify  to  the  same  effect,  seeing  not 
merely  a  metaphorical  resemblance  but  an  essential  relation 
between  dreams  and  poetry.  Hans  Sarhs,  an  inspired  poet, 
thus  speaks  of  the  poet's  inspiration:* 

"Mein  Freund,  das  g'rad  ist  Dichter's  Werk 
Dass  er  sein  Traumen  deut'  und  merk', 
Glaub  mir,  des  Menschen  wahrstes  Wahn 
Wird  ihm  im  Traume  aufgetan: 
Air  Dichtkunst  und  Poeterei 
Ist  nichts  als  Wahrtraum-Deuterei." 

"The  happy  moment  for  the  poet,"  says  Bcttinclli, 
"may  be  called  a  dream — dreamed  in  the  presence  of  the 
intellect,  which  stands  by  and  gazes  with  open  eyes  at  the 
performance. "■"  "Genius,"  according  to  Jean  Paul  Richter, 
"is,  in  more  senses  than  one,  a  sleepwalker,  and  in  its  brigTiT 
dream  can  accomplish  what  one  awake  could  never  do.  It 
mounts  every  height  of  reality  in  the  dark;  but  bring  it 
out  of  its  world  of  dreams  and  it  stumbles."  '  Cjoethc, 
using  the  same  word,  speaks  of  writing  Werther  "uncon- 
sciously, like  a  sleepwalker,"  and  of  his  songs  he  says: 
"It  had  happened  to  me  so  often  that  I  would  repeat  a  song  to 
myself  and  then  be  unable  to  recollect  it,  that  sometimes  I 
would  run  to  my  desk  and,  without  stirring  from  my  place, 
write  out   the   poem   from   beginning   to  end,   in   a    sloping 

'  Thomson,  Castle  of  Indolence,  i.  f  ■ 
'  I£ssays  of  Klia,  "The  Sanity  of  Ti  ur  (.  icimi^. 

'For  development  of  this  adnnral>lcdefinitii>n  «cc  Revue  des  Deux  '  londet, 
Oct.  1,  1897,  "Qu'cJt  que  la  Pocsie?" 

•Die  Mciitcriinser.    Quoted  by  W.  StclccI,  Dichtung  uad  Neuros  .  p.  2. 
'  W.  Ilirtch,  Genius  and  Degeneration,  p.  32. 


F.  C.  Prescott 


hand,  i  or  the  same  reason  I  always  preferred  to  write 
with  a  pencil,  on  account  of  its  marking  so  readily.  On 
several  occasions  indeed  the  scratching  and  spluttering  of 
my  pen^awoke  me  from  my  somnambulistic  poetizing."^ 
H^hhe]^  after  recording  in  his  Journal^  having  actually 
dreamed  an  exceedingly  beautiful  but  terrible  dream,  says: 
"My  belief  that  dream  and  poetry  are  identical,  is  more  and 
more  confirmed."  '  Lambj  who  was  in  spirit  even  more  than 
in  accomplishment  a  poet,  believed  that  "the  degree  of  the 
soul's  creativeness  in  sleep  might  furnish  no  whimsical 
criterion  of  the  quantum  of  poetical  faculty  resident  in  the 
same  soul  waking."  ^  Such  expressions  suggest  that  dream- 
ing and  poetizing,  if  not  identical  as  Hebbel  believed,  are 
more  than  superficially  related.  If  we  wish  to  understand 
poetr}',  a  clue  like  this,  given  us  by'  the  poets  themselves, 
is  worth  following. 

Unfortunately,  however,  dreams  are  as  little  known  to 
us  in  their  true  nature  as  poetry  itself.  Though  they  are 
as  old  as  history  —  probably  as  old  as  mankind  — they  are 
still  obscure  in  their  cause  and  significance  and  their  rela- 
tion to  the  ordinary  mental  processes.  The  people,  in  all 
countries  and  from  the  earliest  times,  have  clung  to  the  belief 
that  they  are  significant,  particularly  as  foretelling  the  future. 
Their  interpretation,  however,  has  always  been  vague  and 
uncertain.  The  theories  of  modern  psychologists  do  not 
ordinarily  go  far  or  deep  enough  to  be  convincing  or  even 
interesting.  Altogether  the  world  of  dreams  has  remained 
a  mystery  to  us  —  a  world  in  which  we  live  a  fantastic 
secondary  mental  life  curiously  unrelated  to  that  of  waking, 
from  which  we  return  puzzled  by  our  fleeting  memories. 

A  recent  book  of  Professor  Sigmund  FreyiL promises  to 

] Ibid.,  p.  33. 
Quoted  by  Stekel,  p.  2. 

"Essays,  "Witches  and  Other  Night  Fears."  In  Lamb's  _original  manuscript 
(in  the  Dyce-Forster  Collection  at  South^Kensington)  the  final  paragraph  of  the 
essax reads  as  follows:  "When  l^awoke  I  came  to  a  determination  to  write  prose  all 
the. rest  of  my  life;  and  with  submission  to  some  of  our  young  writers,  who  are  yet 
diffident  of  their  powers,  and  balancing  between  verse  and  prose,  they  might  not 
do  unwisely  to  decide  the  preference  by  the  texture  of  their  natural  dieiuns.  H 
thgse  are  prosaic,  they  maydepend  upon  it  they  have  not  much  to  expect  in  a  crea- 
ti\L£.way  from.their  artificial  ones.     Whaj'fTreams  must  not  Sp^^ser  havpRad!" 


\ 


6  Poetry  and  Dreams 

/give  us  a  better  understanding  of  this  subject  of  dreams. 
According  to  Dr.  Frcud^our  dreanis  are  an  integral  part  of 
our  mental  life,  witli  definite  origiTTand  caTTse;  they 'can  be 
^^Jjriirrly  intfrprrncrl  ^iQil, JirTMi£JTj__infn  relation  with  our 
waking  thougbis-^ajodLXcclings;  they  areirT^certam  respects 
sinirrar  to  other  mental  activities~vvith  which  we  are  fa- 
mlliarj  and  tFeyliave  a  cfefinite  biological  function  which  is 
important  to  ^r  mental  .ajid_phj^]cal_well^being.  ^This 
view  oT  dreams  forms  part  of  an  extensive  and  original 
psychological  theory,  developed  by  Dr.  Freud,  which  is 
perhaps  too  new  to  be  generally  accepted  —  which,  how- 
ever, undoubtedly  suggests  new  views,  not  merely  in  the 
direction  in  which  it  was  first  mainly  intended  to  be  applied, 
but  in  many  others  —  notably  in  literature.  When  I  had 
occasion  recently  to  become  acquainted  with  this  theory  of 
dreams  I  was  at  once  struck  by  the  fact  that  many  portions 
of  it  were  equally  applicable  to  poetry,  so  much  so,  indeed, 
that  it  occurred  to  me  that  Dr.  Freud  might  have  .first 
developed  his  theory  from  poetry  and  then  transferred  't  to 
dreams.  I  have  since  learned  that  this  was  not  the  case, 
that  in  fact  he  first  approached  the  subject  from  a  very 
different  direction.  The  relation  to  poetry,  however,  is 
striking. 

I  wish,  then,  in  the  first  place  to  apply  some  portions 
of  this  theory  to  literary  problems,  in  particular  to  transfer 
some  of  the  conclusions  in  regard  to  dreams  to  the  apparentl}' 
/    related  field  of  poetry,  and  to  examine  the  evidence  bearing 
j    on  these  conclusions  which  is  supplied  by  literature.     For 
i     the  latter  purpose  I  shall  have  to  proceed  mainly  by  quota- 
tion, even  at    the    risk    of    trying    the    reader's    patience. 
In  fact,  I  do  not  wish  to  advance  a  new  theory  of  poetry,  or, 
for  the  most  part,  to  express  my  own  opinions;  but  rather  to 
bring  together  and  into  relation  some  truths  which  have  long 
since  been  expressed   in   poelr\    but    ha\e   iR\er  been  suc- 
cinctly stated  in  prose. 

Writing  merely  as  a  student  ol  literature  1  ^hall  have  to 
assume  the  soundness  of  Dr.  Freud's  theor)',  though  this 
may  be  still  in  debate  among  psychologists.      Incidentally, 

Die  Jltjuimdcutung,  icaxtiJ  edition,   IW).     Kor  summaries  of  Dr.  Freud's 
lhcor>^_oNrcami,  «ee  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  XXI,  piu-2iij,309. 


F.  C.  Prescott  7 

however,  I  may  be  able  to  find  some  evidence  bearing  upon 
it  in  literature.  New  theories  of  this  kind,  if  at  all  important, 
are  seldom  new  in  the  sense  that  they  have  not  been  surmised 
and  foreshadowed  by  poets  and  other  imaginative  writers. 

Chjs^_i£_a^ parL  of  the  function  of  poets  as  prophets —  to  see  I" 
utli_imaginatively  before  it  is  grasped  intellectually;.     It 
is  one  of  the  tests  of  new  doctrines  to  ask  if  they  thus  find 
confirmation  in  literature. 

Let  us  retyjB  to  the  parallel  between  poetry  and  dreams. 
Let  us  take  into  consideration  also,  for  further  comparison, 
besides    dreams    and___£oetry,    two  _other   mental    activities 
which   seem  on   similar   evidence  to  be    related  —  waking 
d ream.g'^;;i^dajr'3re'am Sy—  a nd  hysterical  or  neurotic  halluci- 
nations  aTrd~rihisions.     That    nocturnal    dreams   and   dayT 
dreams^ave  some  relation  is  suggested  by  their  common) 
designation,  while  day  dreams  frequently  pass  into  halluci^ 
nations.     The  word  dream  is  supposed  to  be  etymologically^ 
connected  with  the  German  triigen^  to  deceive,  its  fundameny 
tal  idea  being  ijlujion.     There  is  also  apparent  resemblance 
between  the  illusions  of  hysteria  and  the  visions   of   poetic 
or  prophetic   rapture.     The  question   is,\What  may  thes€^ 
several  kinds  of  mental  activity  have  in  common?  I 


I 

In  a  dream  the  scenes  which  we  remember,  with  their 
grotesque  figures  and  actions,  and  their  curious  emotional 
coloring,  are  called  by  Dr.  Freud  its  "manifest  content."  ^ 
The  manifest  content  is  usually  strange  to  us  and  cannot  be 
intelligibly  connected  with  our  waking  experience.  Behind  t^^ 
these  appearances,  however,  is  the  "latent  content"  —  the 
underlying  thought  of  the  dream  —  the  impulses  and  ideas 
contributing  to  form  it,  of  which  underlying  thought  the 
remembered  dream  is  a  distorted,  fictitious,  or,  one  might 
almost  say,  dramatic  representation.  The  dream  is  a  group, 
or  series  of  significant  symbols.  Its  interpretation  is  like 
that  of  a  dumb-show  or  a  charade;  jt^is  a  matter  of  finding  the 
meaning  which  lurks  behind,  actuates,  and  explains  thes^ 

And  this  meaning  when  found 


grange  appearajices.     And  this  meaning  when  found  —  the 
underlying    thought  v-  is    no    longer    unintelligible;    it    fits 


8  Poetry  and  Dreams 

clearly   into  the  dreamer's   mental   life,   indeed  it  regularly 

concerns  what  to  him  is  most  personal  and  vital.     These  two 

tx^hings,  the  manifest  and  thejatent  contents,  it  is  important 

that  the  reader  should  keep  distinct  and  clearly  in  mind. 

The  interpretation  of  dreams,  of  their  maQif£5l_content,  is 

a  difficult  matter,  involving  a  knowledge  of  the  so-called 

dream-work,'^ —  that  is,  of  the  strange  processes  by  which. 

^      t"he   urtderlyihg^  thought   is   elaborated    into   the    manifest 

content  by  the  mmd  during  sleep 


^Ihe  relation  thus  indicated  between  the  apparent  and 
the  underlying  thought  of  dreams  will  perhaps  seem  less 
novel  to  those  accustomed  to  analyze  and  interpret  works 
of  literature  and  the  other  arts.  Behind  every  work  of 
creative  imagin;)tinn — pnem,  p.-^inting,  r>r  pifCf  nf  nrfb i- 
tXLCture  —  is  the  JjJtf"^'  'dea  or  mantivp  impulse  which  In- 
spires and  explains  it(l^he  Prisoner  of  Chillon,  for  example, 

was   the   work   of   a    man    who   pa';<;innaTply-   dpcirad-pf^r^rmal 


liberty  and  so  devoted  himself  to  the  liberty  of  mankind. 
The  Gothic  cathedrals  were  inspired  by  the  religious 
devotion  and  aspiration  which  dominated  the  middle  ages. 
They  were  built,  says  Emerson,  "when  the  builder  and  the 
priest  and  the  people  were  overpowered  by  their  faith.  Love 
and  fear  laid  every  stone."  Behind  Marmion  and  Ivanhoe 
lay  a  love,  contracted  in  childhood,  for  the  medieval  past, — 
which  Scott  spent  his  life  in  trying  to  realize  and  reconstruct. 
Scott's  poems  and  novels  were  inventions  —  so  to  speak, 
dreams  —  having  their  key  in  Scott's  ruling  impuL<'c,  whicii 
expressed  itself  thus  through  the  working  of  his  imagination, 
jln  some  similar  way  our  ruling  impulses  are  clothed  in 
vfictional  forms  by  a  play  of  the  imagination  in  sleep. 

^UVl')'  'lr<-nni,  :i<  rr  .r.lin^r  LoDx.  Fn.'ud  and  ihls  JO  OnOl4 

the  most  important  conclusions  of  the  dre am  theory  —  has  tlu' 
kajTie  latent  purp( )rt  —  to  rc-present  the^m a gmary  ful ft  1  men t 


f  some  ungratilTed  wish/  The  underlying  thought  may 
always  be  expressed^By  a  sentence  beginning  li'ould  that — . 
In  the  dream  proper  this  optative  is  dropped  for  the  present 
indicative,  or  rather  for  a  scene  in  which  the  wish  is  visibly 
represented  as  fulfilled.  In  dreams  of  children  the  wish  is 
embodied  openly;  in  those  of  adults  it  is  commonly  disguised 
Die  Traumdcutung,  III,  VII  (c). 


F.  C.  Prescott 


and  distorted  in  the  representation.     Thus,  in  the  world  of 
dreams,  we  obtain  those  things  which  are  denied  in  the  world  ^ 
of  reality.     We  get  money,  place,  children,  friends,  success  in  "Ty 
love,  riddance  of  our  enemies, —  according  to  our  desires. 
This  fact  is  recognized  by  language  in  which  dream  is  usejii 
for  wish;  to  realize  one's  wildest  dream  is  t^  nhtain  nnp'g | 
f "o n d e sjt__wishjk     It    is    often    recognized    also    in    literature. 
"It  ^all  even  be  as  when  a  hungry  man  dreameth,"  says 
Isaiah,  ^and,  behold,  he  eateth;  but  he  awaketh  and  his 
soul  is  empty;  or  as  when  a  thirsty  man  dreameth,  and, 
behold,  he  drinketh;  but  he  awaketh  and,  behold,  he  is  faint, 
and   his   soul   hath   appetite."* 

Our  dreams  do  not  always  fulfil  our  wishes  in  the  ob- 
vious  way    suggested    by   this    passage.     Sometimes    these 
wishes  are  hidden  even  from  ourselves.     We  do  not  recognize 
them  as  our  true  wishes;  much  less  do  we  recognize  thatThev- 
receive  a  fanciful  fulfilment  in  our  dreams.     But  at  bottoml ' 


eyery^dream  is  inspired  by  and  gratifies  some  desire_of_tl 
soul. 

Dr.  Freud's  theory  of  wish-fulfilment  in  dreams  was 
probably  not  suggested  to  him  by  Nietzsche.  It  is,  how- 
ever, in  remarkable  agreement  with  the  theory  advanced 
in  the  Morgenrothe.^  Nietzsche  makes  the  supposition 
"that our  dreams,  to  a  certain  extent,  are  able  and  intended 
to  compensate  for  the  accidental  non-appearance  of  sus- 
tenance," or  satisfaction  for  our  cravings,  "during  the  day." 
"Why  was  yesterday's  dream  full  of  tenderness  and  tears, 

Chap.  XXIX,  V.  8.  So  in  Romeo  and  Juliet,  each  dreamer  dreams  according 
to  his  waking  desire: 

"And  in  this  state  she  [Queen  Mab]  gallops  night  by  night 

Through  lovers'  brains  and  then  they  dream  on  love; 

O'er  courtiers'  knees,  that  dream  on  court'sies  straight, 

O'er  lawyers'  fingers,  who  straight  dream  on  fees, 

O'er  ladies'  lips,  who  straight  on  kisses  dream. 


Sometimes  she  gallops  o'er  a  courtier's  nose, 

And  then  dreams  he  of  smelling  out  a  suit;  t 

And  sometime  comes  she  with  a  tithe-pig's  tail 
Tickling  a  parson's  nose  as  a'  lies  asleep. 
Then  dreams  he  of  another  benefice."     (Act  I,  Sc.  4.) 
'See  the  translation.  The  Dawn  of  Day,  1903,  p.  118.     The  whole  section, 
"Experience  and  Fiction,"  is  most  interesting. 


X 


10  Poetry  and  Dreams 

>  while  that  of  the  preceding  day  was  facetious  and  wanton, 
(  and  of  a  previous  one  adventurous  and  engaged  in  a  con- 
tinued gloomy  search?  Why  do  I,  on  one,  enjoy  inde- 
scribable raptures  of  music;  on  another,  soar  and  lly  up 
with  the  fierce  delight  of  an  eagle  to  most  distant  summits? 
These /r/io«j,  which  give  scope  and  utterance  to  our  cravings 
for  tenderness  or  merriment,  or  adventurousness,  or  to  our 
longing  after  music  or  mountains, —  and  everybody  will  have 
striking  instances  at  hand  —  are  interpretations  of  our  ner- 
vous irritations  during  sleep.  .  .  .  The  fact  that  this  text 
[of  our  nervous  irritations]  which,  on  the  whole,  remains  very 
much  the  same  for  one  night  as  for  another,  is  so  differently 
commented  upon,  that  reason  in  its  poetic  efforts,  on  two 
successive  dajs,  imagines  such  diflPerent  causes  for  the  same 
nervous  irritations,  may  be  explained  by  the  prompter  of 
this  reason  being  to-day  another  than  yesterday, —  another 
craving  requiring  to  be  gratified,  exemplified,  practised,  re 
freshed,  and  uttered, —  this  very  one,  indeed,  being  at  it^ 
flood-tide,  while  yesterday  another  had  its  turn?  Real  lif^l 
has  not  this  freedom  of  utterance  which  dream-life  has;/ 
it  is  less  poetic,  less  licentious."  Our  cravings  thus,  in  sleepj 
];rompt  a  fictional  and  poetic  gratification  or  utterance^ 
Nietzsche's  expression  is  very  suggestive. 

Sometimes    our   dreams    come    true.     Our    wishes    are 
seldorrv-preposterqus  —  inconceliiaMy  attainable.     "In  the 
attempt  to  realize  our  dreams,"  as  Alr.^LLixcKxk  KUis  says., 
"lies  a  large  part  of  our  business  in  lite."'      \i  lu-rc-  ilu-re  i;}  a  * 
willrhere  is  a  way.    -^In  waking  re'aTity^we  work  toward  and 
sometimes  succeed  in  getting  that  for  which  we  have  longed,  I 
and  of  which  wc  have  dreamed.     Thus  the  old  belief  that 
dreams  are  prophetic  is  justified.     For  the  belief  is  indeed 
old  and  widespread,  prevailing  among  all  nations,  civilized 
and  uncivili'/.ed,  and  leaving  traces  in  all    literatures.*     "I 
will  pour  out  my  spirit  upon  all  flesh,"  says  the  Lord  to  Joel, 
"and  your  sons  and  your  daughters  shall   prophesy,  your 
old  men  shall  dream  dreams,  and  \our  \'oung  men  shall  see 
visions."     We   may    say    of    prophecy   in    dreams,    as_Dj-. 
lalip.son  said  of  apparitions:     "All  argument  is  against  it, 

riic  U'firld  of  Dreamt,  "Aviation  in  Dreams." 
'.Sec  K.  B.  'I'ylor,  Prinutivc  Culture,  "nJex. 


F.   C.   Prescott 


11 


but  all  belief  is  for  it."     We  shall  see  presently  that  this 
belief  is  true  in  a  profound  sense.' 

It  will  be  difficult,  however,  for  various  reasons,  to  give  ^ 
examples  which  will  make  what  has  just  been  said  —  of  wish 
fulfilment  and  prophecy  in  dreams  — clear  and  convincing 
to  the  reader.  Actual  dreams  might  easily  be  recounted, 
and  to  these  might  be  added  the  wishes  which  they  have  been 
found  on  analysis  really  to  represent.  This,  however, 
would  be  unsatisfactory  unless  the  analysis  were  also  given, 
which  is  impracticable.  The  interpretation  of  dreams  is 
difficult,  involving  knowledge  of  a  complicated  technique. 
It  does  not  proceed  by  a  uniform.,  stereotyped  substitution 
of  meanings  for  the  dream  symbols  as  in  the  old  quackery 
of  the  "dream  books."  Though  the  general  principles  of 
interpretation  are  definitely  ascertained,  their  appli- 
cation in  practice  varies  constantly  with  the  experiences, 
thoughts,  and  associations  of  each  individual.  Thus  any 
convincing  interpretation  of  examples  would  take  the  reader 
deep  into  the  personal  history  of  the  dreamer  and  would 
involve  endless  narrative  and  explanation.^  It  seems-  better 
for  our  purpose  to  take  an  example  from  the  analogous  field 
of  waking  dreams  or  "day  dreams."  When  we  are  alone 
and  our  attention  is  abstracted,  when  we  sit  with  wide- 
open  eyes  before  the  fire  or  gaze  through  the  window 
without  seeing,  when  the  pressure  of  the  outside  world  is 
thus  relaxed,  then  we  "dream  being  awake."  Our  imagi- 
nations are  freed  and  portray  to  the  mind's  eye  an  ideal 
world  in  which  our  hopes,  otherwise  vain,  are  realized. 
Then  we  build  castles  in  Spain,  or  elsewhere,  as  we  wish. 
If  the  conditions  are  favorable,  if  the  imagination  is  active, 
and  if  the  mind  is  moved  by  strong  emotion ;  these  waking 
visions  sometimes  become  extraordinarily  vivid,  amounting 
to  hallucinations. 

The  following  example,  then,  will  illustrate  wish-fulfil- 


« 


Sec  Freud,  Sammlung  kleiner  Schriften  zur  Neurosenlehre,  zweite  Folge,  p. 
S'),  on  ''resolution  dreams";  also  for  dreams  actually  prophetic,  A.  A.  Brill,  New 
York  Medical  Journal,  April  23,  1910.  Dr.  Brill  first  clearly  explained  the  mantic 
character  of  dreams. 

'Plenty  of  examples  will  be  found  in  the  Traumdeutung  and  in  the  summaries 
in  the  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  already  referred  to. 


12  Poetry  and  Dreams 

ment  and  prophecy  in  dreams.  Goethe  tells  how,  as  he  was 
once  riding  to  Gesenheim  after  visiting  Fredcricka  he  saw 
his  counterpart  riding  toward  him.  "I  saw  myself  coming," 
he  says,  "along  the  same  path  on  horseback  toward  me, 
dressed,  as  I  had  never  been,  in  pike-gray  and  gold,  I 
shook  myself  out  of  the  dream,  and  the  figure  was  gone. 
But  it  is  singular  that  eight  years  later,  not  at  all  by  choice, 
but  only  by  chance,  I  found  myself  riding  over  the  same 
path  in  the  very  direction  my  visionary  self  took,  and  clad 
in  just  these  clothes,  being  again  on  my  way  to  Fredericka. 
Whatever  the  explanation  of  these  things  may  be,  the 
wonderful  phantom  gave  me  at  that  moment  of  separation 
some  alleviation."  ' 

It  is  noteworthy  that  Goethe  himself  speaks  of  this 
apparition  as  a  dream.  The  illusion  was  apparently  stronger 
than  in  the  ordinary  day  dream,  perhaps  because  Goethe's 
imagination  was  more  profound,  perhaps  because  the  in- 
citing emotion  was  more  violent.  The  dream,  however, 
is  easy  of  interpretation.  In  this,  as  doubtless  in  all 
hallucinations,  the  wish  is  father  to  the  thought.  This 
visionary  self,  going  in  the  opposite  direction,  obviously 
embodies  a  desire  to  return  to  Fredericka.  And  this  desire 
is  actually  fulfilled,  when  eight  years  later  Goethe  follows 
the  impulse  which  inspired  his  dream  and  returns  to  Fred- 
ericka, though  apparently  the  impulse  did  not  remain  a 
conscious  one  with  Goethe,  for  he  returned  by  chance  and 
not  by  choice.  The  dream  thus  becomes  prophetic.  Even 
the  suit  of  pike-gray  and  gold  is  realized,  though  this  also 
will  seem  not  at  all  remarkable  after  a  moment's  considera- 
tion. Thus  dreams  always  represent  wishes,  and  thus 
dreams  .somcl imes  conie  trutT  In  his  pathetic  essay," Dream 
Children,"  Lamb  recounts  a  dream  in  which  one  of  the 
deepest  wishes  of  his  heart  secures  imaginary  gratification; 
but  on  awaking  he  finds  himself  "quietly  seated  in  his 
bachelor  armchair,"  and  his  wish  is  never  in  actuality 
realized.  The  same  wish  inspires  similar  visions  in  a  recent 
talc,  '"They,"  by  Mr.  Kipling. 

Ports  h.Tvr  nftrn,  if  mqi  ;iiu.i\  s.  been  great  dreamers.x 
jU;tl_mi.ly  metaplu)ricall\',  but  actualh'^  and  bulK  bv  ni^ht 
Quoted  by  Hirsch,  Gcniui,  p.  93. 


F.   C.   Prescott 


13 


and  by  day.  Goethe  had  other  strange  visions.  Lamb, 
for  example  in  his  "Chapter  on  Ears,"  recounts  in  his 
quaintly  humorous  way  quite  terrible  dream  experiences. 
Chatterton  and  Blake  had  remarkable  dreams  and  visions, 
which  were  closely  connected  with  their  poetry.     T)e  Qninrpy 

found  in  df(;>am!^  n-intprial  fnr  hU  "irnpaR.siopp'i  pros'"  ' ' 
rolefidgp  in  sleep  rompo^pd  the  beautiful  fragment  which 
he  entitled  "Kiibla  Khan."  The  "Ancient  Mariner"  is  either 
a  dream  or  like  one:  a^JLowell  notes,  "it  is  marvelous  in  i_ts 
mastery  over  that  delightfully  fortuitous  inconsequence 
which  is  the  adamantTne  logic  of  drpam^Dd."J— -^oe  has 
an  interesting  passage  on  the  "psy.cbal"'fancies"  arising  ir 
Ithe  soul  "at  those  mere  j^oHitsof  time  where  the  confines 
of_  the  wakin^^jagofktplend  with  those  of  the  world  o^ 
dreams";'^  and  "  Ligeia  "  and  "  Ulalume  "  give  some  idea  o|f 


the   strange  world   "out  of  space,   out  of  time,"   through 
which  his  spirit  passed. 

Bnnyan,  who  is  the  type  in  literature  of  native 


inspn;a- 


tion  without  culture,  and  who  thus  jerhaps  illnptrates  witji 
special  clearness  the  working  of  poetic  Imagination  pure  and 
untrammeled.  constantly  beheld  visions  under  the  strf^':! 
of  his  reh'g'^^^^^^'  pmr>ti'r>iai  As  3.  chlld,  he  tells  us,  he  com- 
mitted terrible  sins.  These  "did  so  offend  the  Lord,  that 
even  In  my  childhood  he  did  scare  and  affright  me  with 
fearful  dreams,  and  did  terrify  me  with  dreadful  visions."^ 
External  objects  and  events  passed  by  him  unnoticed;  while 
"he  looked  upon  that  which  was  passing  through  his  own 
mind  and  heart  as  though  It  were  something  external."^ 
Watching  his  brazier's  fire,  journeying  alone  through  coun- 
try roads,  working  mechanically  In  Bedford  jail,  he  saw 
images  and  heard  voices  which  were  as  clear  and  vivid  to  him 
as  those  of  objective  reality.  Like  Dunstan  and  Luther,  he 
was  tempted  by  the  Devil  in  person,  and  yielded;  he  re- 
pented, and  saw  Christ  himself  looking  down  at  him  through 
the  tiles  of  the  house-roof,  saying,  "Ady  grace  is  sufficient 
for  thee."  These  appearances,  says  Taine,  were  "the 
products  of  an  Involuntary  and  Impassioned  Imagination, 

Literary  and  Political  Addresses,  "Coleridge." 
^"  Marginalia,"  Works,  Virginia  edition,  Vol.  XVI,  p.  88. 
'Grace  Abounding,  ed.  Brown,  pp.  9,  xxiii. 


^ 


k 


14  Poetry  and  Dreams 

which  by  its  hallucinations,  its  mastery,  its  fixed  ideas,  its 
mad  ideas,  prepares  the  way  for  the  poet,  and  announces 
an  inspired  man."'  fin  Runyan  w^as,  as  his  principal 
biographer  styles  him,  essentially  "The  Drearner/'^  His 
books  are  little  more  than  a  record  of  his  dreams.  "As  I 
walked  through  the  wilderness  of  this  world,  I  lighted  on  a 
certain  place  where  was  a  Den,  and  I  laid  me  down  in  that 
place  to  sleep:  and,  as  I  slept,  I  dreamed  a  dream."  "pj^)^ 
begins  The  Pilgrim's  Progress,  as  the  title  says,  "in  the 
similitude  of  a  dream." 

Shrllcy,  the  type  of  inspired  poets,  exhibited  the  same 
psychological  character.  "At  no  period  of  his  life,"  says 
j.  A.  Symonds,  "was  he  wholly  free  from  visions  which  had 
the  reajjtv  of  facts.  Sometimes  they  occurred  in  sleep,  and 
were  prolonged  with  gainful  vividness  into  his  waking  mo- 
ments. Sometimes  they  seemed  to  grow  out  of  his  intense 
meditation,  or  to  present  themselves  before  his  eyes  as  the 
projection  of  a  powerful  inner  impression.  All  his  sensa- 
tions were  abnormally  acute,  and  his  ever-active  imagination  i 
confused  the  border  larjds  of  the  actual  and  the  visionary."  ^ 
The  account,  given  bylHogg,  of  his  "slumbers  resembling 
a  profound  lethargy,"  tHls  us  that  "he  lay  occasionally  upon 
the  sofa,  but  more  commonly  stretched  out  before  a  large 
fire,  like  a  cat;  and  his  little  round  head  was  exposed  to  such 
a  fierce  heat,  that  I  usea  to  wonder  how  he  was  able  to  bear 
it.  .  .  .  His  torpor  was  generally  profound,  but  he  would 
sometimes  discourse  incoherently  for  a  long  time  in  his 
sleep."  Then  "he  woulq  suddenly  start  up,  and,  rubbing 
his  eyes  with  great  violence,  and  passing  his  fingers  swidly 
through  his  long  hair,  wou\Id  enter  at  once  into  a  velum  out 
argument,  or  begin  to  recite  verses,  cither  of  his  own  com- 
position or  from  the  work  <q/  others,  with  a  rapidity  and  an 
energy  that  were  often  quite  painful."^  Curiously  this 
bodily  heat  was  with  Shelley  conducive  to  dreams  and 
poetry.     The  ".Ccnci  "  was  written   in  the  warm  sun  on  his 

Knnli»l>  l^itcralurc,  Hcxik  II,  Chap.  5,  Sec.  6. 
'Sec,  for  example,  the  vision  described  in  Grace  Abounding,  paragraph  53, 
with  Hunyan's  interpretation. 
^'Shcllry.  p.  91. 
^^Uicllcy. 


F.   C.   Prescott 


15 


roof  at  Leghorn.*  "When  ny  brain  gets  heated  with  a 
thought,"  he  said,  "it  soon  boils." ^  In  such  a  mood  he 
wrote  "  The  Triumph  of  Life."     "The  intense  stirring  of  his 

imagination    implied   b}'   tl-ii';   <;iiprpmp   pnptir  pffnrt^   thp   <;r)li- 

tude  of  the  \'illa  Alagni,  and  the  elempnta]  fprvnr  nf  Ttajj^p 
heat  to  \vhich  he  recklessly  exposed  himself,  contribnted  to 
m^ke  Shelley  more  than  usually  nerv^-tns.  His  somnam- 
bulism returned,  and  he  saw  visions.  On  one  occasion 
he  thought  that  the  dead  Allegra  rose  from  the  sea,  and 
clapped  her  hands,  and  laughed  and  beckoned  to  him.  On 
another  he  roused  the  whole  house  at  night  by  his  screams, 
and  remained  terror-frozen  in  the  trance  produced  by  an 
appalling  vision."^  A  study  of  Shelley's  life  shows  that 
there  is  the  closest  connection  between  this  power  of  vision 
and  his  poetical  faculty.  Perhaps  Shelley's  case  was  one  of 
those  which  led  Lamb  to  believe  that  the  soul's  creativeness 
in  sleep  furnishes  a  measure  of  the  poetical  faculty. 

Slevenson  has  a  "Chapter  on  Dreams,"  describing  his 
own  experience,  which  is  so  instructive  that  if  space  per- 
mitted it  should  be  quoted  here  entire.*  "Ij^e  was  from  a 
child,"  he  tells  us,  "an  ardent  and  uncomfortable  dreamer"; 
as  a  child  he  had  terrible  dream-haunted  nTghts.  While  a 
st^udent  m  llidmburghJie_began_i^to  dr£amJjl-Sec[uence^3ri^ 
thus  to  lead  a^oubleTife —  one  of  the  day,  one  of  the  night ' ' 
—  which  soon  sent  him  "trembling  for  his  reason"  to  the 
doctor.  He  "had  long  been  in  the  custom  of  setting  himself 
to  sleep  with  tales,  and  so  had  his  father  before  him."  It  is 
not  strange,  then,  that  he  "began  to  read  in  his  dreams — 
tales,  for  the  most  part,  and  for  the  most  part  after  the 
manner  of  G.  P.  R.  James,  but  so  incredibly  more  vivid 
and  moving  than  any  printed  books,  that  he  has  ever  since 
been  malcontent  with  literature."  "But  presently,"  he 
continues,  "my  dreamer  began  to  turn  his  former  amuse- 
ment of  story  telling  to  (what  is  called)  account;  by  which 
I  mean  that  he  began  to  write  and  sell  his  tales.  Here 
was  he,  and  here  were  the   little  people  who  did  that  part 

E.  Dowden,  Life  of  Shelley,  p.  429. 
'Symonds,  Shelley,  p.  166j  see  quotation,  p.  26,  below. 
'Ibid.,  p.  177. 
*  Works,  Thistle  Edition,  Vol.  XV,  p.  250. 


#► 


16  Poetry  ard  Dreams 

of  his  business,  in  quite  new  flonditions.  The  stories  must 
now  be  trimmed  and  pared  and  set  upon  all  fours,  they  must 
run  from  a  beginning  to  an  end  and  fit  (after  a  manner)  with 
the  laws  of  life;  the  pleasure  in  a  word  had  become  a  business; 
and  that  not  only  for  the  dreamer  but  for  the  little  people 
of  his  theatre.  These  understood  the  change  as  well  as  he. 
When  he  lay  down  to  prepare  himself  for  sleep,  he  no  longer 
sought  amusement,  but  printable  and  profitable  tales;  and 
after  he  had  dozed  off  in  his  box-seat,  his  little  people  con- 
tinued their  evolutions  with  the  same  mercantile  designs." 
Tlius  the  scenes  of  some  of  Stevenson's  tales,  for  instance. 
of  "Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde."  were  first  enacted  in  this  dream 
theatre;  and  these  tales  were,  as  he  represents  them,  a  col- 
laboration between  himself  and  what  he  calls  his  'Mittl>^ 
\       Pgopje^— -  that    is,    between    his    rnn<;riniig    wal-ing    intellerr 

and  his  dream  faculty. 

These  examples  will  perhaps  serve  to  make  more  con- 
vincing the  transition  which  we  are  now  to  make  from  dreams 
to  poetxy  prop^.  The  function  of  poetry  also  seems  to  be  lo 
represent  the  imaginary  fulfilment  of  our  inVgratified  wislxe s 
or  desire.s.  The  poet  B,a£aD  says,  "submits  the  shows  of 
things  to  the  desires  of  the  rpi"d."  The  poe^  is  essentially 
^   ")an   fill<^d   with   dp«;irp^   iins-Qtigfiprlj  ..anrl   it   jc;   in   a   "stala-oi" 

dissatisfaction  that  poetry  arises.'  The  lover,  separated 
from  his  mistress,  who  falls  to  scribbling  verses,  is  typical 
of  all  poets.  The  dissatisfaction  inspiring  poetry,  however, 
may  be  of  any  kind.  Burns  parted  from  his  Clarinda, 
Dante  worshiping  Beatrice  from  a  distance,  Byron  suffering 
from  oppression  and  unable  to  fight  actively  against  it, 
Coleridge  dissatisfied  with  life  in  England  as  he  finds  it,  and 
dreaming  of  a  Utopia  on  the  banks  of  the  Susquehanna, 
Wordsworth  looking  back  to  the  time  when  the  earth 
"did  seem 
Apparelled  in    celestial  light," 

are  all  in  the  mood  for  producing  poetry.  Tju^oct  does  not 
live  in  the  present;  he  liopes  and  aspires,  "Jt  is  no  mciio 
amii:^:^tion  of  the^beaiij^'  beJorcJlLi,'*  savs  ]^\  which  in- 
spires   the    poet,    "f^H    ,-1    wild    ifT.iri    to    reach    the    bc.nity 

Compare  the  theory  of  Ribot,  I.'Imagination  Crcatrice,  p.  36;   "C'cst  dans 
les  bcsoins  qu'il  faut  chcrchcr  la  cause  premiere  Je  toutes  les  inventions." 


F.   C.   Prescott 


17 


above.     It  is  the  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star 


5Jl 


The 


use  of  poetry  is  to  aflFord  an  escape  from  renh'tv;  to  trBftfi- 
fprm  the  real  world,  by  an  effort  of  the  poetic  imaginarinnj 
into  an  ideal  world  in  accordance  with  oiir_desir'"s,  nnr  hnpps^ 
^ur  aspiration^  The  use  of  poetry,  Bacon  says  again, 
"hath  been  to  give  some  shadow  of  satisfaction  to  the  mind 
of  man  in  those  points  wherein  the  nature  of  things  doth 
deny  it;  the  world  being  in  proportion  inferior  to  the  soul; 
by  reason  whereof  there  is  agreeable  to  the  spirit  of  man  a 
more  ample  greatness,  a  more  compact  goodness,  and  a  more 
absolute  variety,  than  can  be  found  in  the  nature  of  things.  "^ 
Byron  expresses  nearly  the  same  thought  in  verse: 

"  The  beings  of  the  mind  are  not  of  clay; 

Essentially  immortal,  they  create 
And  multiply  in  us  a  brighter  ray 

And  more  beloved  existence:  that  which  Fate 

Prohibits  to  dull  life,  in  this  our  state 
Of  mortal  bondage,  by  these  spirits  supplied, 

First  exiles,  then  replaces  what  we  hate; 
Watering  the  heart  whose  early  flowers  have  died, 
And  with  a  fresher  growth  replenishing  the  void."^ 

It  is  perhaps  dangerous  to  generalize  broadly  and  say 
that  the  use  of  all  poetry  is  that  which  R^cpn  describes, 

that  poetry  uniformly  repr^f^<"ntR  the  gratifiratinn  of  nnsar- 

'sfird  Hpg^''"^g|  Aluch  goes  under  the  name  of  poetry,  satir- 
ical, humorous,  and  didactic,  to  which  this  description  is 
not  directly  applicable.  Poetry  is  broadly  of  two  kinds  —  to 
employ  a  distinction  of  John  Keble's  which  will  be  noticed 
later  —  primary,   which  is  original  and  inapir^-^;   ^"d   qpt- 

oadajy,  which  is  serond-hand^ rnpying    the  forms, M_Ld.- 

spiration.  There  is  Homer,  and  there  are  poets  like  those 
whom  Plato  describes  as  depending  on  Homer,  as  the  suc- 
cessive iron  rings  on  the  magnet.  Our  principle  applies 
only  to  thp  pnptry  pf  inspiratifin.  Perhj4is_aJi..imag^ina^tiye_  . 
lyricof  pur,; Joy  would  :qnstitute  an  exception  to  the  prin- 
ciple. It  is  doubtful,  however,  if  unmixed'Toy'Ts 'a  poetical 
mood;  if  the  note  of  sadness  is  not,  as-^-SheUeyi- and_ JPpe • 

"The  Poetic  Principle." 
'The  Advancement  of  Learring,  Book  II. 
'Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  IV,  5. 


''*""»  "'"^ 


18  Poetry  and  Dreams 

thought,  inseparable  from  true  poetry.  Perhaps  even  in 
joy  the  heart  remains  unsatisfied;  "it  may  still  feel,"  as  Poe 
says,  "a  petulant  impatient  sorrow  at  our  inability  to  grasp 
now,  wholly,  here  on  earth,  at  once  and  forever,  those  divine 
and  rapturous  joys  of  which  ...  we  attain  to  but  brief 
and  indeterminate  glimpses."'  Poetry,  according  to  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge,  always  implies  passion;  and  passion  is 
properly  suflfering,  dissatisfaction,  the  effect  of  desire.  "Most 
wretched  men,"  says  ShcHey,  in  "Julian  and  Maddalo," 
"Are  cradled  into  p^iry  by  wrong: 
And  learn  in  suiTer^  what  they  teach  in  song." 

Poetry  expresses  passion  ^fid  poetry  expresses  unsatis- 
fiei-dedre ;  I  believe  it  is  not  psychologically  incorrect  to  say 
that  these  two  statements  are  fundamentally  equivalent. 

In  judging  the  general  principle  above  mentioned  —  that 
the  end  of  poetry,  as  of  dreams,  is  to  satisfy  desire — the  reader 
should  keep  in  mind  two  further  considerations.  First, 
that_thc  gratification  of  poetry  may  extend  no  further  than 
that  derived  from  the  jdealized  exp ression,  which  is  in  eveiy 
case  substituted  for  the  imperfect  and  inhibited  utterance 
ot  ordmary^  life.  ^^Qudly,  thatm^poetry  the  poet's__d£- 
s^res  are  not  represented  openly  ami  literally;  they  are  dis- 
guisedy  conveyed  through  a  medium  of  fiction,^  b odied-forlh 
in  strange  forms  as  a_resurt  of  t|ic  alchemic  action,  the 
'^ream-work,''  ol  the"poet's  brain.  Tl^  jast  point  wilM^e 
no^e  jull)^  considered^latQj-. 

In?  'poct'^s  "called  creative,  and  his  activity  that  of 
the  creative  liTi^girfattelT. '  ~^0(5d"'vnt1i^  to  his 

divme  imagThatuDn,"''^says  Puttenham,  expressing  the  view  of 
the  older  English  critics,  "made  all  the  world  of  naught.  .  .  . 
Even  so  the  very  poet  makes  and  combinf^s  out  nf  his  own 
h^:ain  both  the  verse  and  mnttcr  of  his  potjn,"^  So  Byron 
says  of  poetry: 

'*  'Tis  to  create,  and  in  creatii.t*  live 
A  being  more  intense,  that  uc.cndow 
With  form  tmr  fancy,  gaining  as  we  givcj 
The  life  wf  image,  even  as  I  do  now."^  j 

The  Poclic  Principle." 
'Arte  of  Kn^libh  Pocsic,  cd.  Arhcr,  p.  V). 
•Childc  Harold'*  PilKriniagc,  111,6. 


F.  C.  Prcscott 


19 


And  Shelley  of  the  poet: 

"But  from  these  create  he  can  f    >  ■ 

Forms  more  real  than  living  man, 
Nurslings  of  immortality.'" 

The  poet  is  called  a  creator  because,  as  we  have  seen,  he 
creates  in  an  ideal  world,  according  to  our  desires,  what  Is_ 
Tarlcin^__in_the  Hivin("l3'created  world  of  realityT  His  work 
IS- thus  akin  to  the  divine^— ''a  repetition,"  as  Coleridge 
calls  it,  "in  the  finite  mind  of  the  eternal  act  of  creation 
in  the  infinite  /  aw."^  He  is  essentially  what  the  name 
signifies,  7roiT]T^<;^  a  maker  or  creator.  Poetry,  as  all  the 
older  and  better  critics  agree,  is  not  essentially  expression 
in  metrical  language, — 

"No  jingling  serenader's  art 
Nor  tinkling  of  piano  strings."^ 

Bacon,  following  Aristotle,  calls  poetry  "feigned  history," 
and  includes  under  it  all  kinds  of  fiction.  "The  poet  is 
a  maker,  as  his  name  signifies,"  says  Dryden,  "and  he  who 
cannot  make,  that  is,  invent,  has  his  name  for  nothing." 
Fiction,  moreover,  is  essentially  equivalent  to  poetry,  as  its 
etymology  would  suggest  — ^  coming  from  the  Latin  fingere, 
related  to  facere,  it  signifies  a  making  or  creatiorT.^  The 
German  Dichtung  comprises  both  poetry  and  fjctjpn;  indeed, 
by  older  ^English  critics  plays  and  novels  are  frequently 
called  poems,  even  when  written  in  prose.  The  essential 
activity  of  the  writer  of  plays  and  novels  is  the  same  as  that 
of  the  poet;  he  also  creates  in  an  ideal  world,  subjecting  the 
shows  of  things  to  the  desires  of  the  mind.  The  word 
poetry,  therefore,  will  be  used  here  throughout,  as  the 
equivalent  of  Dichtung,  to  include  every  work  of  creative 
imagination  in  literature,  whether  in  prose  or  verse. 

The  p^elS-have  traditlonaUy.  be£JL  considered  prophets. 

Prometheus  Unbound,  Act  I,  Sc.  1.  ♦ 

^Biographia  Literaria,  Chap.  XIII. 

^Emerson,  Merlin. 

'To  this  creation  the  imitation  of  Aristotle  is  essentially  equivalent.  It  is 
not  an  imitation  of  nature  in  the  ordinary  sense,  but  a  sublimation  of  nature;  or, 
more  exactly,  a  mimic  creation,  arising  partly  from  the  natural  propensity  of  men 
to  copy  what  they  see  in  nature,  and  partly  from  the  poetic  or  fictioning  propensity 
mentioned  above.  See  S.  Butcher,  Aristotle's  TTieory  of  Poetry  and  Fine  Art, 
Cha  p.  IV,  particularly  pp.  150,  153. 


f 


> 


20  Poetry  and  Dreams 

Apollo  was  the  god  of  poetry  and  of  the  oracles.  "The 
oracles  of  Delphos  and  Sibylla's  prophecies  were  wholly 
delivered  in  verses";  as  those  of  Mother  Shipton  and  of  the 
present  day  fortune-teller  are  in  jingling  rhymes.  The  same 
is  true  "of  the  dreamer  Merlin  and  his  prophecies."  To  the 
bard,  the  seer,  and  the  prophet  have  been  attributed  the 
same  character  and  inspiration.  This  view  is  still  confidently 
held.  After  noting  that  in  earlier  epochs  poets  were  cajled 
legislatorTand  propheis,  Shelley  says:  ''A  poet  essentially 
comprises  and  unites  both  of  these  characters.  For  he 
not  only  beholds  the  present  intensely  as  it  is  and  discovers 
the  laws  according  to  which  present  things  ought  to  be 
ordered,  but  he  beholds  the  future  in  the  present,  and  his 
thoughts  are  the  germs  of  the  flower  and  fruit  of  latest  time." 
Emerson  believes  that  poets  are  still  inspired  to  prophecy, — 
as  in  "Merlin": 

"There  are  open  hours 
When  the  God's  will  sallies  free 
And  the  dull  idiot  might  see 
The  flowing  fortunes  of  af  thousand  years." 

What  js  the  _expl  a  nation  of  this  union  of_  poetry  and_ 
prophecy.''  Perhaps  in  part  it  lies  merely  in  the  fact  that  the 
poet  is  a  man  of  wide  learning  and  observation,  of  free  and 
comprehensive  thought,  who,  employ^ing  an  imagination  of 
the  merej}^  practical  order,  akin  to  that  ot  the  merchant 
forecasti ng  thf>  rnrqing  year  in  business,  "beholds  the  future 
in  thc_  present"  gnd  forrtrll'^  it  Thus  Shelley  foresaw 
future  events  in  Irish  politics.'  ;\  deeper  explanation  is 
I  suggested,  however,  by  the  apparition  of  Goethe,  men- 
tioned above.  The  poet  in  his  poetry  expresses  iiis  desires, 
primarily  his  own  desires,  but  also,  through  his  well-known 
universal  and  representative  character,  the  desires  of  others 
r-of  his  class  or  country,  of  mankind.  Great  poets  are 
fereat  for  that  reason,  because  their  writings  give" "some 
Shadow  oT satisfaction     to  the  minds  ot  all  nic;n '.'    VVh at  tlu- 

Symonds,  Shelley,  pp.  62,  63.  ShcIIcy  li.id  siranjjc  premonitions  of  his 
dcathbydrowninK;8ee  p.  154.  Blake. takenby  his  father  to  Ryland's  studio,  said, 
after  leavinf?,  "Father,  I  do  not  like  the  man's  face;  it  lo<jks  as  if  he  will  live  to 
be  han^'ed" — which  he  was,  twelve  years  later.  Sec  Gilchrist's  Life,  Vol.  I, 
p.  13.     Perhaps  we  had  better  leave  such  strange  prophecies  unexplained. 


F.  C.  Prescott 


21     / 


great  poet  desires  all  men  desire;  he  is  only  their  spokesman. 
[nd  what  all  men_desire^E]iey  strive  earnestly  to  obtakup^tfid 
will  obtain  eventually.     As  Lowell  says, 

"The  dreams  which  nations  dream  come  true, 
And  shape  the  world  anew."^ 
Thns  the  ronnertinn  hptwaaj^-pn^try  nnri  prophpry  hprnrnps 
at  least  partially  fvpHrahle  and  rnrnprehensihlp  tn  iis..  It 
is  no  marvel  if  in  this  way  the  poet  sees  "the  flowing  fortunes 
of  a  thousand  years."  The  range  of  prophecy  is  as  great  as 
that  of  human  desire  or  aspiration.  For  example,  "The 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  to  a  grain  of  mustard  seed,  which 
a  man  took,  and  sowed  in  his  field;  which  is  indeed  the  least 
of  all  seeds:  but  when  it  is  grown  it  is  the  greatest 
among  herbs,  and  becometh  a  tree,  so  that  the  birds  of  the 
air  come  and  lodge  in  the  branches  thereof."  This,  though 
not  to  be  definitely  interpreted,  is  poetry  and  prophecy  —  a 
prophecy  which  apparently  has  required  and  will  require 
great  length  of  time  for  its  fulfilment.  Even  the  beautiful 
vision  of  John,  who  was  carried  away  in  the  spirit  and  saw  a 
great  city,  the  street  whereof  was  pure  gold,  as  it  were  trans- 
parent glass,  will  one  day,  let  us  all  hope,  be  realized. 

"Among  the  Romans  a  poet  was  called  vates,  which  is  as 
much  as  a  diviner,  foreseer,  or  prophet,  as  by  his  conjoin-ad 

\VOrds,  vatic ijLUim    and-^'^^^V^'^^^r^^  is   manifpst-   qn  hpavpn]y  a^ 

title  did  that  excellent  people  bestow  upon  this  heart- 
Iravishing  knowledge."^  The  poet,  the  prophet,  and  thp~ 
priest  are  one,  because  thejbest  of  religion  is  prophecy  and 
^oeiry  of  the  highest  kind.  The  true  priest  sees  truth 
S^  subjectmg  the  shows  of  things  to  the  desires  of  the 
mmd  —  to  our  highest  desires  or  asmLaJloiia^  l'he__txire 
priest,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  like  the  poet,  also  ministers 
to  the  peace  and  comfort  of  mankind.  At  the  present  time, 
when  prophecy  is  no  longer  believed  in,  when  poetry  is  too 
often  regarded  as  mere  versifying  or  artistry,  and  when 
religion  is  so  much  in  need  of  inspired  ministers,  it  will  help 
us  to  recognize  the  common  character  in  these  three  things, 
which  the  men  of  old  wisely  joined  together  and  which  we 
have  put  asunder. 

"Ode  to  France." 

-Sidney,  Defense  of  Poesy,  ed.     Cook,  p.  5. 


/■ 


11 


22  Poetry  afid  Dreams 

II 

Poetry,  then,  like  dreams,  affords  expression  and 
imagined  gratification  to  our  desires.  If  our  _ desires  are 
actually  gratified,  our  poetry,  like  our  dreams,  becomes 
prophetic.  The  explanation  is  in  both  cases  the  same.  Let 
us  follow  the  parallel  further. 

Dreams,  according  to  Dr.  Freud,  are  not,  excepting 
those  of  children,  inspired  by  conscious  desireSj_J:)ut  by 
unconscious  ones.'  Sometimes,  it  is  true,  the  manifest 
content  of  a  dream  shows  without  distortion  the  fulfilment 
of  a  wish  of  which  the  dreamer  is  entirely  conscious;  more 
often  also  such  a  conscious  wish  is  discovered  in  the  latent 
content  on  analysis;  in  every  case,  however,  as  appears 
on  fuller  analysis,  these  conscious  wishes  are  associated 
with  and  merely  re-enforce  deeper  unconscious  ones,  which 
are  the  fundamental  motives  to  the  dream  activity.  Thus 
no  wish  is  capable  of  producing  a  dream  which  is  not  un- 
conscious or  associated  with  another  wish  which  is  uncon- 
scious. This,  for  its  explanation,  requires  some  knowledge 
of  a  part  of  Dr.  Freud's  psychological  theory^  which  is  funda- 
mentally important,  namely,  that  which  deals  with  psychic 
repression.  Only  such  desires  remain  in  our  consciousness 
as  are  "acceptable  to  consciousness."  Certain  desires 
cannot  possibly  be  gratified  because  they  meet  with  actual 
external  hindrances.  Others  cannot  be  gratified  because 
their  gratification  would  be  incompatible  with  our  duty  — 
our  obligations  towards  others.  In  either  instance  there  is 
a  conflict  between  the  selfish  individual  impulse  and  ob- 
jective circumstances  —  environment;  the  case  being  the 
same  whether  the  hindrance  to  gratification  is  physical, 
Ijing  in  an  actual  impediment,  or  mc^ral,  arising  from  the  in- 
dividual's regard  for  law,  morality,  custom,  or  the  opinion 
of  others.  Such  desires,  since  they  are  incapable  of  being  ex- 
pressed in  activity  calculated  to  secure  gratification,  arc 
not  worth  retention  in  consciousness.  The)'  are,  moreover, 
inevital:)ly   unpleasurable    -  painful   to   the   individual,   and 

Dr.  Freud  uses  the  term  unconscious  to  denote  mental  processes  which  cannot 
spontaneously  be  recalled  to  consciousness,  —  which  are  recalled  only  under 
unusual  circumstances  or  by  artificial  <neans.  For  the  theory  of  this  section  sec 
Die  Traunuiiniiiiii^r,  VII. 


F.   C.  Prescott 


23 


because  painful,  they  are  by  a  defensive  process,  repressed. 
These  desires,  however,  are  still  proper  to  the  individual; 
they  are  not  removed,  but  only  transferred  to  unconscious- 
ness; and  there  remain  operative.  That  is,  they  are  still 
capable  of  starting  various  mental  processes.  One  of  these 
processes  is  that  of  dreams.  Our  unconscious  wishes  —  those 
which  are  impracticable,  or  which  are  painful,  shameful,  or 
otherwise  intolerable,  and  thus  are  driven  from  our  conscious 
waking  minds  —  are  fulfilled  for  us  in  sleep.  And  biologi- 
cally considered,  the  function  of  dreams  is  this, —  that  they 
satisfy  and  allay  mental  activities  which  otherwise  would  dis- 
turb sleep.  By  affording  a  necessary  expression  or  discharge 
they  secure  mental  repose.  The  dream  is  thus  the  "guardian 
of  sleep."  The  function  of  day  dreams  and  hallucinations  is 
doubtless  tlie  ^ame  —  to  relieve  the  overburdened  mind 
and  secure  a  comfort  not  to  be  found  in  the  presence  of 
reality.'  Speaking  of  the  apparition  already  mentioned, 
Goethe  says:  "Whatever  the  explanation  of  these  things 
may  be,  the  wonderful  phantom  gave  me  at  that  moment  of 
separation  some  alleviation." 

Some  readers  may  be  inclined  to  doubt  the  existence 
of  this  repression,  of  unconscious  desires,  and  in  general 
of  the  "unconscious"  which  plays  so  large  a  part  in  Dr. 
Freud's  theory.  They  may  be  inclined  to  believe  that  a 
person  is  definitely  aware  at  any  moment  what  his  desires 
are,  and  his  motives  for  action;  and  that  unconscious  de- 
sires and  motives  are  a  fiction.  Such  a  belief  is,  as  we  shall 
see  in  a  moment,  strongly  opposed  by  the  best  evidence  in 
literature.  "The  uttered  part  of  a  man's  life,"  as  Carlyle 
observes,  "bears  to  the  unuttered  unconscious  part  a  small 
unknown  proportion;  he  himself  never  knows  it,  much 
less  do  others."^ 

If  poetry  then,  as  we  have  seen,  like  dreams,  has  for 
its  purpose   the   imaginary  gratification  of  our  desires,   it.^-^^—- 
also,  like  dreams,  proceeds  from  an  unconscious  rather  than     / 
a  conscious  mental  activity,    and  has  its  origin  in  uncon- 
scious sources.  \  Poetry  is  not  produced  by  the  f>oet  spon- 
taneously, by  a  v^tilntary  action  of  the  intellect;  it  emerges 

Cf.  Die  Traumdeutung,  p.  304. 
Essays,  "Sir  Walter  Scx)tt." 


24  Poetry  and  Dreams 

involuntarily  and  unconsciously  as  the  result  of  a  hidden 
activity,  which,  therefore,  we  cannot  readily  investigate,  and 
which  we  call,  without  attaching  definite  meaning  to  the 
words,  that  of  the  "poetic  imagination,"  Poetry,  as  Shelley 
\  declares,  is  "created  by  that  imperial  faculty  whose  throne 
is  curtained  within  the  invisible  nature  of  man."'  The 
attitude  of  the  poet  is  never  that  of  the  man  of  science, 
I  who  can  trace  his  work  definitely  step  by  step  from  in- 
ception to  completion;  it  is  rather  that  of  Voltaire,  who, 
on  seeing  one  of  his  tragedies  performed,  exclaimed,  "Was 
it  really  I  who  wrote  that?"  The  testimony  of  poets  and 
critics  to  this  eff^ect  is  universal  and  familiar  to  every  student 
of  literature.  It  seems  advisable,  however,  to  quote  from 
some  of  them. 

"Many  are  the  noble  words  in  which  poets  speak  con- 
cerning the  actions  of  men,"  Plato  makes  Socrates  say,  "but 
....  they  do  not  speak  of  them  by  any  rules  of  art;  they 
are  simply  inspired  to  utter  that  to  which  the  Muse  impels 
them.  .  .  .  God  takes  away  the  minds  of  poets,  and  uses 
them  as  his  ministers,  as  he  also  uses  divines  and  holy 
prophets,  in  order  that  we  who  hear  them  may  know  them 
to  be  speaking  not  of  themselves  who  utter  these  priceless 
words  in  a  state  of  unconsciousness,  but  that  God  himself 
is  the  speaker,  and  that  through  them  he  is  conversing  with 
us."^  According  to  Spenser,  poetry  is  "no  art,  but  a  divine 
gift  and  heavenly  instinct,  not  to  be  gotten  by  labor  and 
learning,  but  adorned  with  both,  and  poured  into  the  witte 
by  a  certain  Enthousiasmos  or  celestiall  inspiration."^  The 
imagination,  on  the  authority  of  Shakespeare,  "bodies  forth 
the  forms  of  things  unknown."* 

The  expressions  of  more  recent  poets  and  critics  are 
to  the  same  effect.  This  "instinct  of  the  imagination," 
says  Hazlitt,  "works  unconsciously  like  nature,  and  receives 
its    impressions    from    a    kind    of    inspiration.^    Scott,    the 

Defense  of  Poetry,  ed.  Cook,  p.  7. 
'Ion,  Jowctl's Translation,  third  edition.  Vol.  I,  p.  502. 

*Quoicd  with  pari  of  the  preceding,  by  VVoodberry,  The  Inspiration  of  Poctrv, 
p.  2. 

'Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  Act  V,  Sc.  1. 
'English  Comic  Writers,  cd.  W.  C.  Mazlitt,  p.  147. 


V. 


F.  C.  Prescott 


25 


sanest  of  poets,  says:  "In  sober  reality,  writing  good  verses 
seems  to  depend  upon  something  separate  from  the  voli- 
tion of  the  author."'  George  Eliot,  living  in  the  clear 
light  of  modern  science,  declared  "that  in  all  she  considered 
her  best  writing  there  was  a  'not  herself  which  took  pos- 
session of  her,  and  that  she  felt  her  own  personality  to  be 
merely  the  instrument  through  which  this  spirit,  as  it 
were,  was  acting."^  iGoethe  says:  "There  is  a  sense  in 
which  it  is  true  that  poets,  and  indeed  all  true  artists  must 
be  born  and  not  made.  Namely,  there  must  be  an  inward 
productive  power  to  bring  the  images  that  linger  in  the  or- 
gans, in  the  memory,  in  the  imagination,  freely  without 
purpose  or  will  to  life,"  This  is  the  opinion  of  those  we 
should  call  poets  of  art  as  well  as  of  poets  of  inspiration. 
"It  is  not  well  in  works  of  creation,"  Schiller  writes,  "that 
reason  should  too  closely  challenge  the  ideas  which  come 
thronging  to  the  doors.  ...  In  a  creative  brain  reason  has 
withdrawn  her  watch  at  the  doors,  and  ideas  crowd  in  pell- 
mell."  Voltaire  wrote  to  Diderot:  "It  must  be  confessed 
that  in  the  arts  of  genius  instinct  is  everything.  Corneille 
composed  the  scene  between  Horatius  and  Curiatius  just 
as  the  bird  builds  its  nest."* 

Voltaire's  expressive  figure  agrees  curiously  with  that 
in  Emerson's  "Problem,"  which  with  "Spiritual  Laws"  throws 
much  light  on  this  subject: 

"Know'st  thou  what  wove  yon  woodbird's  nest 
Of  leaves,  and  feathers  from  her  breast.'' 
Or  how  the  fish  outbuilt  her  shell. 
Painting  with  morn  her  annual  cell? 

"The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome 
And  groined  the  aisles  of  Christian  Rome 
Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity: 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free; 
He  builded  better  than  he  knew;  — 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew. 


Lockhart,  Life  of  Scott,  Chap.  XXXVIII,  Letter  to  Lady  L.  Stuart. 
'Cross,  Life  of  George  Eliot. 
'Quoted  by  Hirsch,  Genius,  pp.  31-33. 
'April  20,  1773. 


26  Poetry  and  Dreams 

"These  temples  grew  as  grows  the  grass; 
Art  might  obey,  but  not  surpass. 
The  passive  Master  lent  his  hand 
To  the  vast  soul  that  o'er  him  planned." 

We  may  stop  a  moment  more  over  two  writers  whom  we 
have  already  considered  in  some  detail  —  Bunyan  and 
Shelley.  Taine  writes  of  Bunyan's  imagination:  "Powerful 
as  that  of  an  artist,  but  more  vehement,  this  imagination 
worked  in  the  man  without  his  co-operation,  and  besieged 
him  with  visions  which  he  had  neither  willed  nor  foreseen. 
From  that  moment  there  was  in  him,  as  it  were,  a  second  self, 
ruling  the  first,  grand  and  terrible,  whose  apparitions  were 
sudden,  its  motions  unknown,  which  redoubled  or  crushed 
his  faculties,  prostrated  or  transported  him,  bathed  him  in 
the  sweat  of  agony,  ravished  him  with  trances  of  joy,  and 
which  by  its  force,  strangeness,  independence,  Impressed 
upon   him   the   presence   and   the   action   of  a   foreign   and 

„superior  master."^ 

Shelley's  inspiration  must  have  been  of  a  similar  order. 
Trelawny  tells  of  finding  Shelley  alone  one  day  in  a  wood 
near  Pisa,  with  the  manuscript  of  one  of  his  lyrics:  "It  was 
a  frightful  scrawl,  words  smeared  out  with  his  fingers,  and 
one  upon  another,  over  and  over  In  tiers,  and  all  run  to- 
gether In  the  most  admired  disorder.  .  .  .  On  my  observing 
this  to  him,  he  answered,  'When  my  brain  gets  heated  with 
a  thought,  It  soon  boils,  and  throws  off  images  and  words 
faster  than  I  can  skim  them  off.     In  the  morning  when  cooled 

^down,  out  of  the  rude  sketch,  as  you  justly  call  It,  I  shall 
attempt  a  drawing.'  "^  We  have  seen  that  with  Shelley 
bodily  heat  was  conducive  to  dreams  and  poetry.  So  here 
he  describes  the  heat  of  inspiration;  a^/lie  does  also  In  the 
following  from  the  Defense  of  Poetry^  [  "Poetry  is  not  like 
reasoning,  a  power  to  be  e.xerted  according  to  the  determi- 
nation of  the  will.  A  man  cannot  say,  '  1  will  compose 
poetry.'  The  greatest  poet  even  cannot  say  it;  for  the  mind 
In  creation  is  as  a  fading  coal,  which  some  invisible  intiuence, 
like  an  Inconstant  wind,  awakens  to  transitory  brightness; 
this  power  arises   from  within,   like   the   color  of  a   flower 

'Knglish  Literature,  Book  II,  Chap.  V,  Sec.  6. 
'Symonds,  Shelley,  p.  166. 


F.   C.   Prescott 


11 


which  fades  and  changes  as  it  is  developed,  and  the  conscious 
fortunes  of  our  natures  are  unprophetic  either  of  its  approach 
or  its  departure.''      ;"'      - 

Poetical  creation,  tlieiui*-g«fie.raljy  described  as  an  in- 
stinctive and  unconscious  process.  Poetry  is  not  a  con- 
scious product  of  the  intellect,  but  the  manifestation  or 
symptom  of  an  inner  uncontrolled  activity./  What  does 
this  mearj.''  /We  have  seen  that  poetry  is  til^  expression  of 
desires.  Is  it  not  natural  to  suppose  that  the  desires  of  the 
poet,  as  of  the  dreamer,  are  impeded  and  consequently  re- 
pressed,—  forced  back  into  unconsciousness.  These  desires 
are  prevented  from  serving  as  motives  for  conscious  action 
looking  toward  gratification;  thus  failing  of  expression  they 
become  unconscious  but  still  remain  operative  in  another 
m^anner  —  ^H^,^  is,  in  starting  an  activity  affording  a  fictional 
gratification]  [  If  this  is  the  case  then  poetry,  like  dreams,  has 
its  source  in  repressed  and  unconscious  desires.]  i  Let  us  see 
what  further  support  is  to  be  found  in  literature  ^or  this  view. 

In  one  of  his  critical  essays,  which  has  been  too  much 
overlooked,  John  Kebje  "proposes  by  way  of  conjecture" 
the  following  definition:  "Poetry  is  the  indirect  expression 
in  words,  most  appropriately  in  metrical  words,  of  some 
overpoweftng  emotion,  ruling  taste,"~or  feeling,  the  direct 
indulgence  whereof  is  somehow  repressed."^  Keble's  exposi- 
tion of  this  definition  is  well  worth  tlTe  reader's  attention. 
As  a  whole  it  cannot  be  even  summarized  here.  Some  parts 
of  it,  dealing  with  the  nature  of  the  poet's  indirect  ex- 
pression, with  the  function  of  metre,  and  with  the  kinds  of 
poetry,  will  be  noticed  later.  For  the  present  we  are  con- 
cerned with  Keble's  theory  of  repression  in  poetry  —  which 
is  in  substance  that  poetry  is  the  expre-ssioa  of  repressed 
emotion,  or,  substituting  terms  which  he  uses  on  another 
page,  of  repressed  "desire  or  regret."^  Keble  says  nothing 
of  the  unconscious  origin  or  production  of  poetry;  other- 
wise his  theory  is  obviously  in  general  agreement  with  that 

The  British  Critic,  Vol.  XXIV,  p.  426,  —  a  review  of  Lockhart's  Life  of 
Scott,  reprinted  in  Occasional  Papers  and  Reviews,  1877.  See  also  Keble's  De 
Poeticae  Vi  Medica;   Praeiectiones  Academicae  Oxonii  Habitae,  1844. 

-Keble's  theory  is  founded  on  Aristotle's;  cf.  ibid.,  pp.  428,  435.  He  per- 
haps does  some  violence  to  Aristotle's  imitation  in  translating  it  expression;  but 
his  theory TO-tTHttbaantiafagreement  with  Aristotle's. 


^  I 


28  Poetry  and  Dreams 

suggested  in  the  preceding  pages.  There  is  no  element  of 
poetry  in  the  direct  indulgence,  or  expression,  of  feeling. 
It~Ts"ori1y  when  this  indulgence,-  or  expression,  is  impeded 
that  poetry  arises.  Thus  a  speech  which  contrives  by  as- 
sociation or  allusion  to  expose  a  hidden  feeling,  or  a  face 
which  by  a  sudden  and  fleeting  play  of  feature  conveys  an 
otherwise  incommunicable  motion  of  the  heart,,  we  feel  to-be 
"expressive,"  or  "poetical."  It  gives  pleasure  by  over- 
coming difficulty  and  obviating  repression,  f  We  call  a  land- 
scape poetical  "when  we  feel  that  it  answfcrs,  or  tends  to 
express,  and  by  expression  to  soothe  or  develop,  as  the  case 
may  be,  some  state  more  or  less  complicat(?d  of  human 
thought  and  feeling,"  for  which  we  can  find  no  words.; 
Peetry  expresses  what  by  other  means  is  inexpressible. 
The  impediment  toexpression  may~be  of  any  nature.  Per- 
haps the  "very  excess  and  violence"  of  the  emotions  "make 
the  utterance  of  them  almost  impossible";  perhaps  the 
emotions  "in  their  unrestrained  expression  would  appear 
too  keen  and  oytrageous  to  kindle  fellow  feeling";  perhaps 
there  is  in  the  writer's  mind  an  "instinctive  delicacy"  which 
shrinks  from  communication.  In  any  case  direct  expression 
being  impossible  a  veiled  or  poetical  one  is  the  recourse. 

For  some  expression  is  necessary;  the  emotions  must 
have  vent.  What  Keble  calls  "the  -  instinctive  wish  to 
communicate"  must  be  satisfied.^  "All  men,"  Emerson 
says,  "live  by  truth,  and  stand  in  need  of  expression.  In 
love,  in  art,  in  avarice,  in  politics,  in  labor,  in  games,  we  study 
to  utter  our  painful  secret.  The  man  is  only  half  himself, 
the  other  half  is  his  expression."^  Thus  to  "open  one's 
mind"  is  healthful  and  comforting.  The  lover  is  relieved 
if  he  can  confess  his  passion.  -The  man  in  anger  must 
"speak  his  mind"  or  "have  it  out."  And  the  same  in 
grief;  "he  often  finds  present  helpe  who  docs  his  griefc 
impart."'  On  the  other  hand,  the  repression  of  emotion 
is  painful  and  dangerous.  "That  way  madness  lies." 
"Give  sorrow  words:  the  grief  that  docs  not  speak, 
Whispers  the  o'crfraught  heart  and  bids  it  break."* 

Sec  llirsch,  Genius,  pp.  43-4.S. 

'Essays,  "Tlic  Poet." 

'Spenser,  Faerie  Queene,  II,  i,  46. 

•Macbeth,  Act  IV,  Sc.  3. 


\     1 


F.  C.  Prescott  :       29 

I  This  helps  to  explain  the  cause  and  use  of  poetry.  We 
Ihave  seen  that  the  function  of  dreams  is  to  prevent  the 
disturbance  of  sleep;  that  of  poetry  is  entirely  analogous. 
/'Here,  no  doubt,"  says  Keble,  "is  one  final  cause  of  poetry: 
I'to  innumerable  persons  it  acts  as  a  safety  valve,  tending  to 
preserve  them  from  mental  disease."  Or,  as  Newman 
expresses  it:  ''Poetry  is  a  method  of  relieving  the  over- 
burdened mind;  it  is  a  channel  through  which  emotion  finds 
expression,  and  that  a  safe,  regulated  expression."  It  ac- 
complishes "thus  a  cleansing,''^  as  Aristotle  would  word  it, 
"of  the  sick  soul."^ 

The  testimony  of  poets  supports  this  view.  Goethe 
speaks  of  his  habit  "of  converting  whatever  rejoiced,, or 
worried  or  otherwise  concerned  me  into  a  poem  and  so  have 
done  with  it,  and  thus  at  once  to  correct  my  conception  of 
outward  things  and  to  set  my  mind  at  rest."  "Sing  I 
must,"  he  makes  Tasso  say,  "else  life's  not  life."  Schiller, 
speaking  of  some  of  his  lyrics,  says:  "They  are>,too  true  for 
the.  individual  to  be  called  poetry  proper;  for  in  them  the 
individual  appeases  his  need  and  alleviates  his  burden."^ 
"I  kittle  up  my  rustic  reed,"  says  Burns  in  his  Epistle  to 
W.  Simson,  "it  gies  me  ease";  and  to  the  same  effect 
in  a  letter  to  Moore:  "My  passions  raged  like  to  many 
devils  till  they  got  vent  in  rhyme;  and  then  conning  over  my 
verses,  like  a  spell,  soothed  all  into  quiet. "^  Wordsworth 
must  have  found  relief  in  poetical  expression: 

"To  me  alone  there  came  a  thought  of  grief; 
A  timely  utterance  gave  that  thought  relief, 
And  I  again  am  strong.'"* 

Essays  Critical  and  Historical,  "John  Keble." 
^Quoted  by  Hirsch,  Genius,  pp.  45,  50. 
'August  2, 1787.     Cf.  also  "The  Vision": 

"I  taught  thee  how  to  pour  in  song, 
To  soothe  thy  pain." 
'  Intimations  of  Immortality."      Cf.  Tennyson,  "In  Memoriam,"  v,  2: 
"But  for  the  unquiet  heart  and  brain, 
A  use  in  measured  language  lies; 
The  sad  mechanic  exercise. 
Like  dull  narcotics  numbing  pain." 
But  this  is  a  relief  of  another  sort, —  mechanic  rather  than  truly  poetic. 


J 


^'•H^r 


30 


Poetry  and  Dreams 


Mr.  Kipling  seems  to  have  understood  this  matter.  In- 
troducing the  tale  of  the  ''Phantom  Rickshaw"  and  speaking 
of  its  supposed  nar-rator,  he  says:  "When  he  recovered  1 
suggested  that  he  should  write  out  the  whole  affair  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  knowing  that  ink  might  assist  him  to  ea?e 
his  mind.  When  little  boys  have  learned  a  new  bad  word 
they  are  never  happy  until  they  have  chalked  it  upon  a  door. 
And  this  also  is  literature."^  The  little  boy  clearing  his 
mind  by  expression  is,  as  Mr.  Kipling  suggests,  typical  of  l]:^- 
later  poet. 

This  use  of  poetry  to  the  poet  explains,  in  part  at  least, 
its  value  to  the  reader.  '  The  poet  provides  expression 
not  merely  for  himsQ^f,  bu^,'  by  virtue  of  his  representative 
character,  for  his  readers  as  well.  One  who  reads,  not  as  a 
student  or  a  connoisseur  for  an  ulterior  purpose,  but  for  the 
true  pleasure  and  satisfaction  which  the  reading  affords, 
finds  in  poetry  the  expression  not  of  another's  feeling  but 
of  his  own.  He  identifies  himself  with  the  poet  and  himself 
lives  through  the  poem;  the  poet  is  only  his  spokesman, 
providing  him  with  the  needed  outlet  for  his  pent  emotion; 
for  him,  too,  the  poem  expresses  what  would  otherwise  re- 
main inexpressible.  Thus  countless  readers  find  relief  and 
comfort  in  poetry.  And  this, explains,  in  part  at  least,  the 
pleasure  which  poetry  affords..  It  is  a  pleasure  of  satisfied 
desire,  akin  to  the  pleasure  of  actual  satisfaction, —  the 
satisfaction  in  this  case  being  an  imaginary  or  fictional  one, 
a  substitute  for  the  actual,  but  affording  a  similar  pleasure. 
The  use  of  poetry,  Bacon  says,  is  "to  give  some  shadozv  of 
satisfaction  to  the  mind  of  man  in  those  points  wherein  the 
nature  of  things  doth  deny  it." 

The  reader  will  remember  that  we  are  throughout  em- 
ploying the  term  poetry  broadly  to  include  all  creative  liter- 
ature: what  has  just  been  said  therefore  applies  to  fiction 
generally,  to  the  novel  and  the  drama.  Men  arc  fatigued 
with  the  business  of  life,  they  are  preyed  upon  by  unpleasant 
feelings,  they  suffer  from  a  tension  which  requires  relaxa- 
tion. They  read  a  novel  or  go  to  the  theatre,  and  find  sup- 
plied in  fiction  what  is  wanting  to  them  in   reality.     They 

Kipling  omits  thf  last  two  smtcrurK  in  smnc  t-iiitioiis  of  the      Pli.Ttii>iiii    Riik- 
ihaw." 


F.  C.  Prescott  31 

feel  what  Keble  calls  the  vis  medica   poeticce;    after  living 
in  this  world  of  fiction  thev 

"With  peace  and  consolation  are  dismissed 
..        And  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent. "^ 
((  This  view  of  poetry  as  a  safe  and  regulated  expression 
for  emotion  will  perhaps  supply  some  commentary  to  Aris- 
totle's   definition    of    tragedy.     The    function    of    tragedy, 
according  to  this  definition,  is  "tp.  effect  through  pity  and 

_iear  the  katharsis  or  purgation' of  these  emotions.".  This 
definition  is  not  necessarily  inconsistent  with  our  description 
of  poetry  as  satisfying  desire.  Shelley  observes:  "Sorrow, 
terror,  anguish,  despair  itself,  are  often  the  chosen  expres- 
sions of  an  approximation  to  the  highest  good.  Our  sym- 
pathy in  tragic  fiction  depends  upon  this  principle:    tragedy 

•delights  by  affording  a  shadow  of  that  pleasure  which  ex- 
ists in  pain."^  The  Aristotelian  katharsis,  at  any  rate,  is 
related  to  the  vis  medica  wYixch.  we  have  explained.  It  is  not 
a  moral  but  primarily  a  psychic  cleansing,  or  curative  pro- 
cess,aimed  at  a  pathological  condition  of  the  mind.  .Katharsis 
is  a  medical  term;  in  "the  language  of  the  school  of  Hip- 
pocrates it  strictly  denotes  the  removal  of  a  painful  or  dis- 
turbing element  from  the  organism,  by  the  elimination  of 
alien  matter."^  "Applying  this  to  tragedy,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Butcher,  "we  observe  that  the  feelings  of  pity  and 
fear  in  real  life  contain  a  morbid  or  disturbing  element.* 
In  the  process  of  tragic  excitation  they  find  relief,  and  the 
morbid  element  is  thrown  off.  The  curative  or  tran- 
quilizing  influence  that  tragedy  exercises  follows  as  an  im- 
mediate accompaniment  of  the  transformation  of  feeling." 
Thus  to  the  Greeks  a  dramatic  representation  was  not  merely 
a  means  of  amusement,  but  a  great  public  and  sacred  rite  of 
purification.^ 

Milton,  Samson  Agonistes,  last  two  lines. 

-Defense  of  Poetry,  ed.  Cook,  p.  35. 

'^Butcher,  Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry,  p.  253. 

'Students  of  Dr.  Freud's  theory  will  understand  why  fear  should  contain  a 
morbid  or  disturbing  element, —  fear  being  the  conversion  of  repressed  desire. 

^This,  however,  is  an  unguarded  statement.  For  it  is  also  one  purpose  of  our 
amusements  to  cleanse  the  sick  mind.  Play  is  the  idealizing  fiction  of  the  child 
as  poetry  is  of  man.  It  is  appropriate, therefore,  that  we  should  call  our  dramatic 
performances  plays. 

It  is  interesting  to  find  that  those  who  practise  the  method  originated  by  Dr. 


32  Poetry  and  Dreams 

The  conclusion,  then,  to  which  this  evidence  leads  is 
that  poetry  is  the  expression  of  repressed  and  unconscious 
desires;  and  that  the  function  of  poetry,  biologically  con- 
sidered, like  that  of  dreams,  is  to  secure  to  us  mental  repose 
and  hence  health  and  well-being.  Poetry  "cleanses  the 
sick  soul."  Might  this  be  one  reason  why  Apollo  had  for 
his  province  not  only  poetry  but  healing,  the  two  things 
being  thus  intimately  related  as  means  to  end.'' 

Freud,  for  dealing  with  psychoneuroses,  speak  of  it  as  the  cathartic  method.  The 
essential  feature  of  this  method  is  that  it  provides  expression  for  repressed  emo- 
tions, these  constituting  "a  painful  and  disturbing  element  in  the  organism";  it 
eflFects  "the  elimination  of  alien  matter."  This  mere  expression  has  been  found 
curative  in  psychoneuroses.  The  Greeks  were  apparently  familiar  with  a  cathartic 
treatment  for  morbid  emotional  states,  persons  afflicted  with  madness  or  "enthu- 
siasm" being  treated  by  music,  which  accomplished  an  emotional  cleansing  analo- 
gous to  that  accomplished  by  tragedy.  Persons  so  treated,  says  Aristotle,  "fall 
back  into  their  normal  state,  as  if  they  had  undergone  a  medical  or  purgative 
treatment."  Perhaps  this  is  one  of  the  matters  which  the  Greeks  understood 
better  than  we.  See  Butcher,  Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry,  Chap.  IX;  cf.  Plato. 
Charmides,  Jowett's  translation,  third  edition,  Vol.  I,  p.  13. 


>  I 


III 

^et  us  now  again  return  to  the  subject  of  dreams. 
Dreams,  as  has  been  said,  have  their  origin  in  the  depths  of 
the  mind,  in -unconscious  mental  processes, —  that  is,  in  proc- 
esses which  do  not  come  to  our  knowledge  except  indirectly, 
or  under  unusual  or  abnormal  conditions, —  the  conditions 
supplied,  for  example,  in  dreams,  in  day  dreams  and  halluci- 
nations, and  in  certain  neurotic  activities.  Under  ordinary 
conditions  there  is  a  force  operating  to  prevent  these  proc- 
esses from  rising  to  the  surface  of  consciousness.  If  the 
reader  has  ever  tried  to  recall  any  matter  —  for  example, 
^a  proper  name  —  which  has  fallen  out  of  his  recollection, 
and  which  he  can  almost  but  not  quite  recollect;  if  he  has 
felt  himself,  so  to  speak,  struggling  to  recover  this  matter 
and  baffled  in  his  efforts,  he  can  form  some  idea  of  the  re- 
pressive force  in  question.^  This  force  is  called  in  the  dream 
theory  the  "psychic  censor";  it  "stands  at  the  gateway  of 
consciousness."  In  general,  it  prevents  the  deeper  processes 
from  becoming  conscious.  Under  certain  conditions,  how- 
ever, when  this  force  is  relaxed,  as  in  sleep,  it  allows  the  re- 
pressed material  to  pass,  or  permits  an  evasion.  That  is, 
it  permits  such  material  to  pass,  but  only  in  a  disguised  and 
distorted  form,  under  which  it  escapes  recognition.  The 
so-called  psychic  censor,  as  its  name  implies,  resembles  a 
public  censorial  officer,  say  of  the  political  press,  who  will 
not  allow  unpleasant  truth  to  pass  for  publication,  but  may 
be  evaded  by  a  veiled  or  disguised  representation.  In 
dreams  the  latent  content  is  under  repression;  it  passes  the 

'  Freud  explains  this  amnesia  as  caused  by  a  connection  between  such  a  name 
and  material  which  is  under  repression.  See  Psychopathologie  des  Alltagslebens, 
p.  3. 

33 


ci- 


\J 


34  Poetry  and  Dreams 

censor  only  in  a  disguised  and  distorted  form,  in  which  it 
becomes  unrecognizable  • — that  is,  in  the  form  of  the  manifest 
content. 

The  operations  by  which,  under  the  direction  of  the  cen- 
sor, the  underlying  thoughts  are  transformed  into  the  appar- 
ent dream  are  called  the  "dream  work"  {Traumarbeit)} 
They  cannot  be  fully  explained  here,  this  being  the  most 
complex  and  difficult  part  of  the  dream  theory.  Through 
these  operations,  however — described  technically  as  "con- 
densation," "displacement,"  "secondary  elaboration,"  etc. — 
the  underlying  thought  is  in  appearance  completely  trans- 
formed; it  is  bodied  forth  in  a  strange  guise  which  bears 
little  or  no  resemblance  to  the  original.  This  explains  why 
dreams  appear  absurd  and  imcomprehensible;  only  when 
these  disguises  have  been  stripped  off,  only  when  the  work 
of  the  censor  has  been  retraced  and  undone,  do  they  disclose 
their  underlying  thought.  An  interpretation  of  dreams, 
then,  requires  a  knowledge  of  the  dream  work. 

In  this  transformation,  however,  one  element  remains 
unchanged.  A  dreajE.Is.  always  emotional,  and  the  emotion 
which  has  properly  belonged  to  the  origmatndream-thoughts 
still  clings  to  the  final  dream,  where  sometimes  it  seems 
strangely  out  of  place.  That  is,  intense  feeling  is  sometimes 
attached  to  apparently  most  trivial  things,  the  explanation 
for  this  being  that  feeling  is  transferred  to  these  things 
from  the  more  important  ones  in  the  original  for  which  they 
stand.  Whatever  strange  forms  the  dream  may  take  this 
emotion  is  real  and  vital;  "im  Traume  ist  der  Affect  das 
einzig  Wahre." 

Some  features  of  this  transformation,  effected  by  the 
dream  work,  require  for  our  purposes  further  explanation. 
The  dream  is  fictional  in  two  senses.  In  the  first  place  it 
represents  an  ungratified  desire  as  gratified,  substituting 
for  the  utinam  of  the  latent  content  a  phantasm  of  gratifica- 
tion. In  the  second  place  it  represents  the  abstract  by  a 
symbolical  concrete.  The  underlying  material,  tlu-  ele- 
ments from  which  the  dream  is  formed,  with  the  desires 
as  motive  power,  may  be  anything  which  finds  place  in  the 
human  mind  —  persons  and  places,  thoughts  and  opinions, 

'Die  Traumdculung,  VI. 


,J^ 


F.  C.  Prescott 


35 


facts  observed  or  Inferences  from  facts,  concretions  or  ab- 
stractions. In  the  dream  these  elements  are  reduced  or 
transposed  into  one  simple  form.  The  dream,  as  a  rule, 
represents  not  thoughts  but  actions.  In  a  dream  we  take 
part  in  an  action  as  one  of  the  actors,  or  see  a  situation 
before  our  eyes.  A  dream  is  a  kind  of  dramatic  represen- 
tation, a  series  of  scenes  in  that  theatre  of  the  brain  which 
Stevenson  describes;  and  only  such  elements  as  are  capable 
of  being  put  upon  the  scene  can  pass  into  the  dream.  A 
thought  cannot  be  directly  represented;  it  must  be  enacted, 
and  therefore  the  dream  makes  constant  use  of  symbols. 
The  symbolism  of  the  wildest  poet  falls  short  of  the  sym-_ 
bolism  constantly  employed  in  dreams.  Temporal  relations 
cannot  be  represented;  in  a  dream  the  time  is  always  present. 
Logical  relations  cannot  be  represented;  the  dream  cannot 
deal  directly  with  an  if  or  a  because.  Such  temporal  or 
logical  relations  must  be  expressed,  if  at  all,  somehow  in- 
directly in  accordance  with  the  dramatic  principle.  Thus 
a  dream  is  mainly  visual  in  nature.  It  may  include  sounds 
and  other  sensations.  It  is,  however,  properly  a  vision. 
All  underlying  elements  must  either  be  suitable  ingredients 
of  a  vision  or  be  transformed  into  such  Ingredients, —  made 
visible,  or  at  least  sensible.  The  dreamer,  then,_sees_a.. 
vision  representing  symbolically  the  gratification  of  his  wish. 
"^  Dreams  often  take  us  back  to  the  experiences  of  early 
childhood.  The  reader  has,  perhaps,  like  the  writer,  found 
this  one  interesting  feature  of  his  dreams, —  that  they  some- 
times bring  up  long-forgotten  incidents,  faces,  emotions, 
with  surprising  vividness.     In  dreams,  as  Dryden  says, 

"Sometimes  forgotten  things  long  cast  behind 
Rush  forward  in  the  brain  and  come  to  mind. 
The  nurse's  legends  are  for  truth  received, 
And  the  man  dreams  but  what  the  boy  believed."  ' 

Day  dreams  also  often  take  us  back  to  childhood.  Drown- 
ing persons  are  said  to  see  their  whole  lives,  including  events 
in  early  life  long  lost  from  conscious  remembrance,  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye;  perhaps  this  vision  is  somehow  related — 

» The  Cock  and  the  Fox,  H.  333-336. 


A 


h 


36  ,  Poetry  and  Dreams 

the  projection  of  an  instinctive,  sudden,  strong  desire  to  live. 
Such  early  memories  appear  recognizably  in  the  manifest 
content  of  dreams;  according  to  Dr.  Freud  they  appear  even 
more  frequently  in  the  latent  content.  Indeed,  the  latent 
content  of  every  dream  probably  goes  back  for  some  of  its 
elements,  for  a  part  at  least  of  the  desires  which  actuate  it, 
to  the  experiences  of  childhood.  These  experiences  have 
perhaps  been  entirely  forgotten;  the  early  desires  have  been 
for  some  reason  repressed.  They  reappear,  however,  in 
dreams,  in  which  we  live  back  into  childhood  again.  "Das 
Traumen,"  says  Dr.  Freud,  "ist  ein  Stiick  des  iiberwun- 
denen  Kinderseelenlebens."^  The  dream  usually  seizes  upon 
some  trivial  incident  of  the  preceding  day  —  trivial  because 
such  incidents  will  be  free  of  associations — and  makes  this  a 
starting-point  or  point  of  crystallization,  to  which  the  old 
experiences  may  attach  themselves.  But  the  old  experi- 
ences are  the  important  elements.  The  significance  of  these 
facts  for  our  purpose  we  shall  see  presently  when  we  return 
to  poetry.  Just  as  the  dream  materials  are  largely  derived 
from  childhood,  so  in  dreams  we  act  and  feel  as  children; 
we  escape  into  an  irresponsible  world  of  play  which  has 
its  only  counterpart  in  childhood.  In  recounting  our 
dreams  we  laugh  at  our  strange  actions  in  them,  as  we 
should  laugh  at  the  actions  of  children.  In  general 
the  dream  experiences,  as  compared  with  those  of 
waking,  have  a  kind  of  freshness  and  vigorous  youth- 
fulness  about  them  as  if  they  stood  nearer  to  life's 
source. 

The  mental  activity  which  produces  dreams  is  different 
from  that  of  ordinary  waking  life.  It  is  apparently  more 
simple,  elementary,  or  central  —  perhaps  we  may  say  more 
childlike.  A  faculty  is  at  work,  which  is  active  also  in 
waking,  but  here  works  in  a  different  way  or  under  different 
control.  This  is  an  image-making  faculty  or  imagination, — 
the  phantasy  (  ^'l'Tao•^a  )  to  which  Aristotle  attributes 
dreams,  hallucinations,  and  illusions.  This  faculty  is  sit- 
uated between  the  senses  on  the  one  hand  and  the  intellect 
on  the  other,  reproducing  images  derived  through  the  senses, 
combining  these  under  the  direction  of  the  intellect,  and  fur- 

'  Die  'I'rauinJiuluun,  P-  ^^'^- 


F.  C.  Prescott 


37 


nishing  material  for  thought.^  Thus  in  waking  moments  it 
is  under  the  control  of  the  intellect.  But  when  the  mind  is 
relaxed  —  at  rest  or  asleep  —  when  it  is  not  on  the  one 
hand  taking  in  new  sensations  or  on  the  other  engaged  in 
thought,  this  faculty,  continuing  active,  answers  other 
more  recondite  purposes.  It  subjects  itself  to  the  hidden 
desires  of  the  mind  and  produces  pictures  at  the  instance  of 
these  desires.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  no  longer  at  work,  but  at 
play.     As  Dryden  says: 

"Dreams  are  but  interludes  which  fancy  makes; 
When  monarch  reason  sleeps  this  mimic  wakes. "^^ 


The  pictures  which  this  faculty  produces  when  it  escapes 
from  the  control  of  the  intellect,  as  in  dreams,  we  call /<3w/aj/2V. 
~  We  may  now  return  to  poetry.  We  have  seen  that  the 
jjiotive  impulse  in  poetry  is  supplied  by  the  poet's  desires. ' 
There  are  repressive  forces,  corresponding  to  the  censor  of 
the  dream  theory,  which  conflict  with  and  control  the  poetic 
impulse.  These  forces  have  already  been  mentioned;  they 
are  the  impediments  to  expression  of  Keble's  theory.  The 
selfish  individual  impulse  cannot  give  itself  free  expression; 
it  must  have  regard  for  appearances,  for  convention,  for 
morality.  This  matter  will  be  considered  more  fully  later. 
In  general  the  conflict  is  between  the  native  inspiration  of 
the  poet  and  external  authority  of  whatever  kind;  the  prin- 
ciple of  control  arises  from  the  latter. 

This  may  be  illustrated  most  readily  in  the  form  of 
poetry,  its  rhythm  and  metre,  which  gives  utterance  to  both 
elements — the  impulse  and  the  control  —  or  is  also,  like  the 
subject  matter,  produced  by  their  conflict.  Strong  and  un- 
restrained emotion  expresses  itself  in  waves,  with  a  throb- 
bing or  pulsation,  in  recurrent  movements  appearing  in 
voice  and  gesture,  which,  constitute  a  natural  rhythm. 
Poetry,  an  emotional  expression,  has  this  rhythm.  The 
beat  of  a  passage  of  poetry  or  impassioned  prose  is  not  a 
superadded  ornament,  but  an  inevitable  and__vital  accom- 
paniment of  such  expj:ession,  going  back,  we  may  imagine. 


'  E.  Wallace,  Aristotle's  Psychology,  p.  Ixxivii. 
=  The  Cock  and  the  Fox,  11.  325-326. 


38  Poetry  and  Dreams 

for  its  origin  to  the  poet's  heart.  It  is,  as  Shelley  says, 
an  "echo  of  the  eternal  music."  In  a  free  expression  this 
rhythm  would  be  bound  by  no  law  but  that  imposed  by  the 
feeling  itself.  In  certain  poets  of  a  primitive  or  strongly 
individual  kind,  for  instance  in  Ossian  or  Walt  Whitman, 
it  is  felt  in  something  like  its  native  wildncss  and  force. 
Usually,  however,  it  is  restrained  by  regard  for  the  tradi- 
tions and  conventions  of  the  poetic  style.  In  Tennyson,  for 
example,  it  has  become  conventionalized  —  subjected  to 
prosodial  law.  The  rhythm  has  become  measured,  metri- 
cal; it  has  been  adapted  to  recognized  forms  of  line  and 
stanza. 

The  nature  and  cause  of  this  metrical  restraint  arc  well 
stated  by  Keble.  "The  conventional  rules  of  metre  and 
rhythm  .  .  .  may  be  no  less  useful,  in  throwing  a  kind  of 
veil  over  those  strong  and  deep  emotions,  which  need  relief, 
but  cannot  endure  publicity.  The  very  circumstance  of  their 
being  expressed  in  verse  draws  off  attention  from  the  vio- 
lence of  the  feelings  themselves,  and  enables  people  to  say 
things  which  they  could  not  express  in  prose,  much  in  the 
same  way  as  the  musical  accompaniment  gives  meaning  to 
the  gestures  of  the  dance,  and  hinders  them  from  appearing 
.to  the  bystanders  merely  fantastic.  This  effect  of  metre 
seems  quite  obvious  as  far  as  regards  the  sympathies  of  others. 
Emotions  which  in  their  unrestrained  expression  would  ap- 
pear too  keen  and  outrageous  to  kindle  fellow  feeling  in 
any  one  are  mitigated  and  become  comparatively  tolerable, 
I  not  to  say  interesting  to  us,  when  we  find  them  so  far  under 
I  control  as  to  leave  those  who  feel  them  at  liberty  to  pay' 
.attention  to  measure  and  rhyme,  and  the  other  expedients 
pf  metrical  composition.  But  over  and  above  the  cflFect 
(on  others,  we  apprehend  that  even  in  a  writer's  own  mind 
there  commonl)-  exists  a  sort  of  instinctive  delicacy,  which 
mnds  its  account  in  the  work  of  arranging  lines  and  syllables, 
and  is  content  to  utter,  by  their  aid,  what  it  would  have 
shrunk  from  setting  down  in  the  language  of  conversation; 
the  metrical  form  thus  furnishing,  at  the  same  time,  a  vent 
for  eager  feelings,  and  a  veil  of  reserve  to  draw  over  them.'" 

I  'British    Ciilic,  Vol.  XXIV,  p.  43S.       Cf.  ColcridRC,    Biographi.1   I.iteraria, 

Cliap-  XVIII ,  on  the  origin  of  metre. 


F.  C.  Prescott  39 

The  form  of-pcetry,  then,  is  the  product  of  two  forces  — 
the  rhythmic  impulse,  and  the  (Control  represented  by  metre, 
liiie,^  stanza,  and  the  like.'  The  natural  rhythm  of  unre- 
strained emotion  would  be  unpleasing  to  a  hearer  as  wanting 
in  regard  for  this  hearer  —  as  wanting  art;  it  must  accord- 
ingly be  reduced  to  recognized  forms.  It  must  not,  how- 
ever, be  lost  in  this  reduction,  but  must  be  felt  constantly 
behind  and  through  these  forms  giving  them  animation. 
In  a  poet  like  Shelley,  in  whom  the  poetic  impulse  is  strong, 
the  natural  rhythm  is  always  so  felt;  it  even  constantly 
threatens  to  break  through  the  bonds  of  form  and  secure 
its  freedom.  In  Pope,  in  whom  the  poetic  impulse  is  weak, 
or  at  any  rate  in  some  of  the  followers  of  Pope,  in  whom 
native  impulse  is  wanting,  the  form  is  everything,  and  the 
echo  of  the  eternal  music  is  entirely  lost.  The  old  question, 
whether  or  not  metre  is  essential  to  poetry,  must  be  an- 
swered formally,  as  the  best  critics  from  Aristotle  to  Words- 
worth have  answered  it,  in  the  negative;  in  every  tolerable 
literary  expression,  however, —  even  in  that  other  harmony 
of  poetical  prose,  which  has  not  only  its  rhythm  but  its 
laws  no  less  exacting  than  those  of  verse  —  there  must  be, 
or  will  be,  not  only  the  element  of  inspiration  but  the  ele- 
ment of  control,  which  in  poetry  employs  metre  as  one  of  its 
commonest  instruments.  Art  as  well  as  inspiration  is 
essential  to  poetry.  ■ 

The  principle  thus  illustrated  in  the  form  of  poetry 
may  be  applied  also  to  its  substance.  The  significant  figure 
of  the  veil  which  Keble  twice  applies  to  the  form,  he  em- 
ploys again  in  describing  the  substance,  in  which  the  same 
controlling  forces  are  at  work.  "In  the  prose  romances  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott,"  he  says,  "and  in  all  others  which  would 
be  justly  considered  poetical,  it  will  be  found,  we  believe, 
that  the  story  is,  in  fact,  interposed  as  a  kind  of  transparent 
veil  between  the  listener  and  the  narrator's  real  drift 
and    feelings."     Scott's    ruling   passion,   his    desire  to   live 

'  Rhyme  has  the  eflFect  of  dividing  the  expression  into  lines  of  regular  length 
recognizable  by  the  ear.  Intrinsically,  however,  it  goes  back  probably  to  a  primi- 
tive or  childish  fondness  for  playing  and  jingling  with  the  sound  of  words  without 
regard  to  their  meaning.  For  this  impulse  in  children,  see  Freud,  Der  Witz  und 
seine  Beziehung  zum  Unbewussten,  p.  105. 


i: 


-il. 


40  Poetry  and  Dreams 

in  the  past  and  to  make  the  past  live  again,  met,  as  Keble 
shows,  various  checks;  it  could,  however,  be  freely  expressed 
in  the  guise  of  a  story.  This  case  is  typical;  every  creative 
poetical  work  is  such  a  veiled  representation.  The  deep 
feeling  of  the  poet  cannot  have  a  direct  but  only  an  indirect, 
or,  so  to  speak,  censored  expression,  through  the  medium  of 
what  Keble  calls  "associations  more  or  less  accidental." 
The  poet's  product,  like  the  dream,  is  a  fiction  in  two  senses. 
;'  In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  phantasy  representing  an  actually 
'^  ungratiiied  desire  as  gratified_^  \  In  the  second  place,  this 
representation  is  not  direct  but  indirect  or  veiled;  it  is 
^allegorical,  figurative,  or  symbolic.  It  lets  one  thing  stand 
for  another  and  by  this  means  bodies  forth,  in  concrete 
sensible  forms,  the  hidden  motions  of  the  soul  of  the  poet. 
Or,    as    Shelley    beautifully    expresses    the    same    thought, 

t'it  arrests  the  vanishing  apparitions  which  haunt  the  in- 
erlunations  of  life,  and  veiling  them,  or  in  language  or  in 
form,  sends  them  forth  among  mankind  bearing  sweet  news 
of  kindred  joy  to  those  with  whom  their  sisters  abide  — 
abide,  because  there  is   no  portal  of  expression  from   the 


""T*.'"  cavern  of  the  spirit  which  they  inhabit  into  the  universe 
^^^df  things.'" 
-"'  '  The  characteristic  operation  of  the  poet's  mind,  then, 

consists  in  an  embodying  of  his  deep  feelings,  his  uncon- 
scious desires,  in  the  fictional  forms  which  we  recognize  as 
customary  in  and  proper  to  poetry.  This  operation,  how- 
ler, or  the  modes  in  which  this  embodiment  is  effected, 
are  untraced  and  obscure.  The  final  product  of  the  poetic 
imagination,  the  manifest  poetry,  is  a  complex  construction, 
or,  to  employ  a  probably  better  word,  a  complex  vital  growth, 
out  of  the  depths  of  the  poetic  mind.  We  can  only  surmise, 
for  example,  by  what  strange  organic  action  the  religious 
emotion  of  John  Bunyan  gathered  to  its  use  the  sensations, 
experiences,  thoughts,  available  associations  of  whatever 
kind,  contained  in  the  dreamer's  mind,  and  thus  grew  into 
the  series  of  scenes  which  make  up  Pilgrim's  Progress.  In 
order  to  trace  this  complex  operation  wc  should  have  to  know, 
more  fully  than  we  can  ever  know  it,  the  historj-of  this  poet — 

'Defense  of  Poetry,  ed.  Cook,  p.  41, 


F.  C.  Prescott  41 

his  early  training,  his  experiences,  the  people  he  met,  the 
books  he  read,  the  sermons  he  heard  —  the  whole  growth 
and  content  of  his  mind.  If  we  had  all  these  facts  as  data, 
and  if  we  knew  the  working  of  the  poetic  faculty,  then  we 
might  trace  the  growth  of  his  poetic  product  from  its  original 
moving  emotion  to  its  final  form.  We  have  not  the  data 
and  we  do  not  know  the  working  of  the  poetic  faculty. 
There  is,  we  may  conjecture,  trusting  to  the  parallel  we  have 
been  following,  a  "poetic  work" — Dichterarbeit  —  corre- 
sponding to  the  dream  work  already  referred  to.  If  we  were 
familiar  with  the  mechanisms  of  the  former,  as  according 
to  Dr.  Freud  we  now  are  with  the  latter,  then  doubtless 
— given  the  necessary  biographical  data — we  might  analyze-v 
poetry,  like  dreams,  to  discover  its  underlying  motives  and  ) 
sources.  Perhaps  a  study  of  Dr.  Freud's  mechanisms  of 
condensation,  displacement,  etc.,  might  throw  much  light 
on  the  working  of  the  poetic  faculty.  Perhaps,  for  example, 
the  extraordinary  concision  and  significance  of  poetry,  as 
compared  with  prose,  is  not  due  to  mere  brevity  or  ellipsis, 
but  partly  to  "condensation,"  in  the  sense  in  which  this 
term  is  used  in  the  dream  theory  —  that  is,  to  the  fact  that 
each  portion  of  the  poetic  product  is  "over-determined," 
and  has  many  roots  in  the  poet's  mind.^  We  cannot  fully 
explore  the  field  thus  indicated  at  this  point. 

Some  observations,  however,  may  be  made,    j^oetry, 
like    the    dream,    is    always    a    product, pi__emotion.     "No 
literary  expression,"  says  Theodore  Watts,  in  his  admirable 
essay  on  the  subject,  "can,  properly  speaking,  be  called  poetry 
that  is  not  in  a  certain  deep  sense  emotional."^     And  just 
as  in  the  transformation  of  the  dream  the  original  feeling  of  , 
the  dreamer  passes  through  without  change  of  quality  and 
attaches  itself  to  the  manifest  dream,  so  probably  in  the 
transformation  of  poetry  the  original   feeling  of  the  poet    i        / 
retains  its  original  tone  if  not  its  original  intensity;   though  1/     ii^ 
all  else  may  be  fiction,  this  remains  real;    the  final    poem,  ' 
whatever  fictitious  expression  it  may  employ,  is  transfused 
with  the  true  feeling  of  the  poet's  heart.     Thus  the  genuine 
feature  of  poetry  lies  in  its  feeling;  this  may  attach  itself  to 

'For  condensation,  see  Die  Traumdeutung,  p.  204. 
'Encyclopedia  Britannica,  "Poetry." 


1 


4:2  Poetry  and  Dreams 

\  . 

the  wildest  fiction;  but  the  fiction  still  appeals  to  us  as  es- 
sentially truthful  because  it  is  animated  by  truth. 

"^i *'  ^  Poetry  again,  like  the  dream,  is  concrete  in  its  method; 

and  the  ingredients  of  poetry  like  the  ingredients  of  the  dream 
must  conform  to  this  principle  of  composition.  Poetry 
is  correctly  defined  by  David  Masson  as  "the  art  of  produc- 
ing a  fictitious  concrete."^  "With  abstractions,"  to  quote 
again  from  Theodore  Watts,  "the  poet  has  nothing  to  do, 

!\save  to  take  them  and  turn  them  into  concretions."  The 
poet  may  think  as  well  as  feel;  he  may  start  with  abstract 
ruths,  but  his  thoughts  and  his  truths  are  only  the  under- 
ying  elements  of  his  poetry.  The  thoughts  cannot  be  ex- 
pressed directly;  they  must  be  reduced  to  concrete  terms, 
appropriately  embodied  in  the  actions  of  things  and  persons, 
expressed  in  the  proper  poetic  language  of  figures  and  sym- 
Dols.  So  one  evidence  of  Goethe's  poetic  mastery,  accord- 
ing to  Carlyle,  was  his  "singular4y— embkinatic  intellect; 
his  perpetual  never-failing  tendency  to  transform  into 
shape,  into  life,  the  opinion,  the  feeling  that  may  dwell 
within  him,  which,  in  its  widest  sense,  we  reckon  to  be 
essentially  the  grand  problem  of  the  poet.  .  .  .  Everything 
has  form,  everything  has  visual  existence;  the  poet's 
imagination  bodies  forth  the  forms  of  things  unseen,  his  pen 
'  turns  them  to  shape. "^  But  we  may  as  well  quote  directly 
from  Shakespeare: 

"And  as  the  imagination  bodies  forth 
The  forms  of  things  unknown,  the  poet's  pen 
Turns  them  to  shapes,  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 
A  local  habitation  and  a  name. 
Such  tricks  hath  strong  imagination: 
That,  if  it  would  but  apprehend  some  joy 
It  comprehends  some  bringer  of  that  joy."' 


'Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats,  and  Otiicr  Kssays,  p.  201.  Criticism,  according 
to  Mr.  W.  C.  Browncll,  is  the  reverse  of  poetry:  "Criticism,  then,  may  not 
inexactly  be  described  as  the  statement  of  the  concrete  in  terms  of  the  abstract." 
Atlantic  Monthly,  April,  1911,  p.  548.  This  illuminates  the  relation  between  poetry 
and  criticism  and  the  value  of  the  latter. 

'Essays,  "Goethe." 

'Midsummer  Niglit's  Droam,  .\ct  V,  Sc.  1. 


F.  C.  Prescott 


43 


So,  according  to  Aristotle's  theory,  "A  work  of  art  re- 
produces its  original,  not  as  it  is  in  itself,  but  as  it  appears 
to  the  senses.  It  addresses  itself  not  to  the  abstract  reason 
but  to  the  sensibility;  ...  it  is  concerned  with  outward 
appearances;  it  employs  illusions;  its  world  is  not  that  which 
is  revealed  by  pure  thought;  it  sees  truth,  but  in  its  concrete 
manifestations,  not  as  an  abstract  idea."^ 

Poetry,  then,  like  dreams,  is  concrete;  its  representation 
Is  made  "under  forms  manifest  to  sense";  perhaps,  also, 
chiefly  and  characteristically  under  forms  manifest  to  the 
sense  of  sight.  The  words  commonly  employed  in  describ- 
ing the  poet's  activity  suggest  this  mainly  visual  character. 
^  He  portrays  and  pictures;  he  imagines;  "imaging,"  Dryden 
/  declares,  "is  in  itself  the  very  height  and  life  of  poetry."^ 
To  the  poet,  as  to  the  dreamer,  is  ascribed  the  power  of 
vision. 

In  dreams  we  have  seen  that  some  incident  of  the  pre- 
deding  day,  which  is  free  of  associations,  serves  as  a  start- 
ing-point or  point  of  crystallization.  So  the  inspired  poet 
often  finds  in  some  casual  experience  —  a  mountain  daisy  or 
a  bright  star  or  a  region  about  Tintern  —  a  centre  around 
'  which  his  poetical  conceptions  may  gather.  Of  his  famous 
/  poem  Wordsworth  says,  for  example,  "  I  began  it  upon  leav- 
ing Tintern,  after  crossing  the  Wye,  and  concluded  it  just 
as  I  was  entering  Bristol  in  the  evening.  .  .  .  Not  a  line  of  it 
was  altered,  and  not  any  part  of  it  written  down  till  I  reached 
Bristol."  Of  this  feature  of  the  poetic  work,  however,  the 
best  account  is  given  by  Goethe.  In  Dichtung  und  Wahr- 
heit,  he  says  that  after  trying  suicide  and  giving  it  up  he 
determined  to  live.  "To  do  this  with  cheerfulness,  however, 
I  required  to  have  some  poetical  task  given  me,  wherein  all 
that  I  had  felt,  thought,  or  dreamed  on  this  weighty  busi- 
ness might  be  spoken  forth.  With  such  view,  I  endeavored 
to  collect  the  elements  which  for  a  year  or  two  had  been 
floating  about  in  me;  I  represented  to  myself  the  circumstances 
which  had  most  oppressed  and  afflicted  me:  but  nothing 
of  all  this  would  take  form;  there  was  wanting  an  incident, 
a  fable,  in  which  I  might  embody  it.     All  at  once  I  hear 

'Butcher,  Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry,  pp.  127,  153. 

^The  Author's  Apology  for  Heroic  Poetry  and  Poetic  License. 


ih 


44  Poetry  and  Dreams 

^tidings  of  Jerusalem's  death,  ...  in  this  instant  the  plan 
;  of  Werther  was  invented:  the  whole  shot  together  from  all 
1  sides,  and  became  a  solid  mass;  as  the  water  in  a  vessel, 
I  which  already  stood  on  the  point  of  freezing,  is  by  the 
^lightest  motion  changed  at  once  into  firm  ice."' 

We  may  suppose,  however,  from  the  analogy  of  the 
dream  that  this  casual  experience  contributes  only  the  final 
touch;  and  that  the  essential  elements  of  poetry  go  back 
to  deeper  experience  and  more  settled  emotions.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  show  by  direct  evidence  that  poetry  generally 
or  often  goes  back  to  repressed  experiences  of  childhood. 
Other  considerations,  however,  suggest  that  in  some  respects 
the  parallel  holds  again  here.  Poetry  has  the  same  freshness 
and  youthfulness  we  have  noted  in  dreams;  it  also  has  upon 
it  the  dew  of  morning  and  the  light  of  the  east.  The  poet's 
mind  works  in  a  primitive  and,  without  disparagement, 
childlike  way.  The  poet  has  the  "wild  wit,  invention  ever 
new,"  which  Gray  attributes  to  childhood."  The  poet,  like 
Walt  Whitman,  is  "a  man,  yet  by  these  tears  a  little  boy 
again. "^  "The  moment  the  poetic  mood  is  upon  him  all 
the  trappings  of  the  world  with  which  for  years  he  may  have 
been  clothing  his  soul  —  the  world's  knowingness,  its  cyni- 
cism, its  self-seeking,  its  ambition — fall  away,  and  the  man 
becomes  an  inspired  child  again,  with  ears  attuned  to  nothing 
but  the  whispers  of  those  spirits  of  the  Golden  Age,  who, 
according  to  Hesiod,  haunt  and  bless  this  degenerate  earth."* 
Indeed  the  Golden  Age,  with  its  clear  bright  figures, 
and  the  Garden  of  Eden,  with  its  first  mortal  pair,  who  were 
naked  yet  unashamed,  and  who  had  not  yet  eaten  of  the  tree 
of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  are  in  some  sense  doubt- 
less only  beautiful  dreams,  poetic  visions,  going  back  either 
to  the  childhood  of  those  who  first  conceived  them  or  more 
broadly  to  the  childhood  of  the  race.  In  these  myths  is 
seen  most  clearly  the  connection  between  dreams  and  poetry 
which  we  have  been  trying  to  trace.     They  are  the  dreams  of 

'Carlylc's  translalion;    Essays,  "Goethe." 
•   Eton  College." 

'  'Out  of  the  Cradle   Endlessly   Rocking."     The  whole  poem  is  an  excellent 
commentary  on  our  text. 

*'V.  Watts,  Encyclopedia  Hritannica,  "Poetry." 


F.  C.  Prescott  45 

nations,  bearing  somewhat  the  same  relation,  as  Dr.  Abra- 
ham has  shown,'  to  the  dreams  of  the  individual  which  folk 
poetry  bears  to  the  poetry  of  the  individual  poet.  They  are 
likewise  the  beginnings  of  our  poetry,  and  furnish  a  clear 
explanation  of  the  working  of  poetic  genius.  "The  theory 
which  has  been  applied  to  the  Grecian  mythology,"  says 
David  Masson,  "applies  equally  to  the  poetic  genius  in 
general.  The  essence  of  the  mythical  process,  it  is  said,  lay 
in  this,  that  the  earlier  children  of  the  earth  having  no 
abstract  language,  every  thought  of  theirs,  of  whatever 
kind,  and  about  whatever  matter,  was  necessarily  a  new  act 
of  imagination,  a  new  excursion  into  the  ideal  concrete. 
If  they  thought  of  the  wind,  they  did  not  think  of  a  fluid 
rushing  about,  but  of  a  deity  blowing  from  a  cave;  if  they 
thought  of  virtue  rewarded,  they  saw  the  idea  in  the  shape 
of  a  visible  transaction  in  some  lone  place,  between  beings 
human  and  divine."  It  is  this  primitive  poetical  faculty  for 
which  Wordsworth  would  return  to  paganism,  that  he  may 

"Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 

"And  so,"  Masson  continues,  "with  the  poetical  mode  of 
thought  to  this  day.  Every  thought  of  the  poets,  about 
whatever  subject,  is  transacted  not  mainly  in  prepositional 
language,  but  for  the  most  part  in  a  kind  of  phantasmagoric 
or  representative  language,  of  imaginary  scenes,  objects, 
incidents,  and  circumstances."^  Thus  a  very  recent  poet, 
Arnold,  starting  with  the  thought  that  Shakespeare  stands 
far  above  other  poets,  transforms  this  thought  into  a  picture, 
sees  Shakespeare  "o'ertopping  knowledge,"  and  then  as  a 
hill,  which  in  turn  is  poetized  into  a  mythical  giant: 

"Forthe  loftiest  hill 
,     That  to  the  stars  uncrowns  his  majesty, 
Planting  his  steadfast  footsteps  in  the  sea, 
Making  the  heaven  of  heavens  his  dwelling-place, 
Spares  but  the  cloudy  border  of  his  base 
To  the  foiled  searching  of  humanity."' 

'K.  Abraham,  Traum  und  Mythus,  pp.  37,  71. 
*Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats,  and  Other  Essays,  p.  229. 
'  'Shakespeare." 


WL 


46  Poetry  and  Dreams 

"The  poet,  then,"  as  Professor  Woodberry  puts  it,  "seems 
to   present  the   phenomenon   of  a    highly   developed    mind 

^^orking  in  a  primitive  way."' 

•^      The  mental  faculty  which  produces   poetry  is    akin    to 

"that  already  described    as    producing    dreams.      It    might 

be  called  the  phantasy,  the  fancy,  or  the  imagination;    but 

V^since  these  terms  have  been  unfortunately  extended  and  di- 
verted to  new  meanings,  it  may  best  be  called  simply  the 
(image-making  faculty.  It  will  be  worth  while  to  consider 
th're-«ia.tter  for  a  moment  historically.  The  faculty  before 
us  is  equivalent  to  the  ^avraaCa,  to  which  Aristotle  attri- 
butes not  only  dreams  but  poetry.  This  Aristotle  defines  as 
"the  movement  which  results  upon  an  actual  sensation." 
In  other  words,  it  is  primarily  the  "  after  eiTect  of  a  sensation, 
the  continued  presence  of  an  impression  after  the  object 
which  exerted  ithas  been  withdrawn  from  actuaiexperience."^ 
It  is  notable  that  Hobbes,  who  on  this  point  closely  fol- 
lows Aristotle,  translates  <fiavTaaLa  bj^  imagination:  "For 
after  the  object  is  removed,  or  the  eye  shut,  we  still  retain 
an  image  of  the  thing  seen,  though  more  obscure  than  when 
we  saw  it.  And  this  is  it  the  Latins  call  imagination,  from 
the  image  made  in  seeing.  .  .  .  Imagination,  therefore,  is 
nothing  but  decaying  sense.  .  .  .  This  decaying  sense,  when 
we  would  express  the  thing  itself  .  .  .  we  call  imagination; 
but  when  we  would  express  the  decay  ...  we  call  it  mem- 
ory."^ J  Bacon  employs  the  word  imagination  in  the  same 
way,  "and  assigns  to  imagination  poetry  as  its  province.* 
Addison,  in  his  instructive  papers  in  the  Spectator  on  the 
pleasures  of  the  imagination,  uses  the  word,  as  might  be 
expected,  in  the  classical  sense  and  makes  imagination  the 
mark  of  poetry.  Whereas  Aristotle,  however,  uses  phantasy 
to  include  images  derived  from  all  the  senses,  Addison  pro- 
fesses to  restrict  imagination  —  though  he  does  not  in  fact 
entirely  so  restrict  it  —  to  images  which  "arise  originally 
from  sight."  From  their  etymology  both  words,  phantasy 
and   imagination,  apply  properly  to  sight  alone;    Addison. 

'I'lic  Inspiration  of  Poetry,  p.  13. 

■li.  Wallace,  Aristotle's  Psycholofjy,  p.  Ixxxvii. 

'T.  Hobbes,  Works,  cd.  Moleswortli,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  4-6. 

•Works,  cd.  Spcdding,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  292,  406. 


F.  C.  Prescott  47 

however,  is  wrong  in  formally  so  restricting  this  faculty,  as 
he  himself  sees  before  he  finishes  his  discussion.  But  "our 
sight,"  as  Addison  remarks,  "is  the  most  perfect  and  most 
delightful  of  all  our  senses'';  hence  imagination  is  mainly 
visual.  This,  then,  is  the  original  use  of  the  word  iviagina- 
tion  in  English,  as  equivalent  to  the  phantasy  of  Aristotle. 
Coleridge  unfortunately  did  much  to  influence  thought  on 
the  matter  during  the  nineteenth  century;  his  vague  or 
unintelligible  observations  on  the  subject,  with  his  attempted 
distinction  between  fancy  and  imagination,  have  served  to 
obfuscate  rather  than  to  clarify  it.  Imagination  has  become 
as  indefinite  in  meaning  as  poetry  itself. 

The  original  signification,  however,  still  forms  the  core 
of  its  meaning,  and  the  best  way  to  secure  definiteness  of 
thought  is  to  return  to  it.  The  poetic  imagination  is  essen- 
tially equivalent  to  the  image-making  faculty  mentioned 
above.  This  faculty,  as  has  been  said,  lies  between  sense 
and  intellect.  Its  images  are  derived  originally  from  sen- 
sations; it  in  turn  furnishes  material  for  thought.  In  ordi- 
nary waking  activity  it  is  in  a  broad  sense  kept  true  to 
reality,  reproducing  images  as  they  have  been  derived  from 
the  senses,  or  combining  these  in  a  manner  approved  by  the 
judgment  for  the  practical  ends  of  action.  Under  other 
conditions,  however, — in  abstraction,  in  sleep,  in  moments  of 
poetical  production,  when  senses  and  conscious  intellect  are 
in  abeyance  —  then  this  faculty  is  freed  from  responsibility 
to  reality,  and  is  put  at  the  service  of  the  desires.  It  does 
not  reproduce  reality;  it  produces  fiction.  Under  proper 
conditions  it  produces  what  we  call  poetry. 

In  the  prose  man,  in  Benjamin  Franklin,  for  example, 
the  imaging  faculty  works  in  a  prosaic  way.  It  reproduces 
images  truthfully  or  combines  them  for  practical  purposes, 
under  the  supervision  of  the  judgment.  In  the  poet,  in 
Bunyan  or  Shelley,  it  is  constantly  and  readily  placed  at  the 
service  of  the  desires  or  aspirations,  producing  fiction  or 
poetry.  It  is  seen  in  its  extreme  poetical  operation  in  a 
man  like  Blake,  who  easily  lost  hold  on  reality,  who  became 
habitually  a  dreamer,  visionary,  or  poet.  "I  assert  for 
myself,"  says  Blake,  "that  I  do  not  behold  the  outward 
creation,  and  that  it  is  to  me  hindrance  and  not  action. 


m 


48  Poetry  and  Dreams 

'What,'  it  will  be  questioned,  'when  the  sun  rises,  do  you  not 
see  a  round  disc  of  fire  something  like  a  guinea?'  Oh!  no,  no! 
I  see  an  innumerable  company  of  the  heavenly  host,  crying, 
'Holy,  holy,  holy  is  the  Lord  God  Almighty!'  I  question 
not  my  corporeal  eye  any  more  than  I  would  question  a 
window  concerning  a  sight.  I  look  through  it,  and  not 
with  it."' 

"We  are  led  to  believe  a  He 
When  we  see  with,  not  through  the  eye." 

This  is  the  difference  between  the  proseman  and  the  poet. 
The  former  sees  with  the  eye  the  world  as  it  is.  The  latter 
sees  through  the  eye  —  the  same  organ  differently  employed 
—  the  world  as  he  would  wish  it  to  be; — this  is  what  we 
mean  by  "second  sight."  The  poet  also  sees  truth,  but  of  a 
different  and  higher  kind.  "What  the  imagination  seizes 
as  beauty,"  says  Keats,  "must  be  truth,  whether  it  existed 
before  or  not.  .  .  .  The  imagination  may  be  compared  to 
Adam's  dream;  he  awoke  and  found  it  truth."" 

From  what  has  just  been  said  of  the  imaging  faculty, 
together  with  what  has  been  said  above  of  poetical  creation, 
we  may  form  a  new,  or  at  least  more  definite,  conception  of 
that  "creative  imagination  "  which  is  ordinarily  ascribed 
to  the  poet.  This  expression,  as  employed  in  current  criti- 
cism, is  a  vague  one,  covering  —  perhaps  properly  for  a  com- 
plete description  —  other  activities  besides  the  comparatively 
definite  one  we  have  been  considering  here.  We  have  been 
dealing  with  the  core  of  the  matter,  however,  and  when  we 
come  to  understand  the  "dream-power"  of  the  poet,  as 
Emerson  calls  it,^  the  creative  imagination  will  have  lost 
most  of  its  mystery.  The  poet  is  a  creator  because,  like  the 
dreamer,  he  creates  in  an  ideal  world  according  to  our  de- 
sires what  is  wanting  in  the  divinely  created  world  of  realil\ 
y  He  pictures  it  through  a  faculty  which  he  has  in  common  witli 

■.   the   dreamer.     That   the   operation   of   this   faculty    in    the 
/ 

i  'A  Vision  of  Judgment.      Cf.  Shakespeare's  '  Love  looks  not  with  the  eye,  but 

-  with  the  mind."     The  lover,  as  Plato  believed,  is  a  kind  of  poet;     cf.  p.  119,  below. 
'Letters,  ed.  I-'orman,  1895,  pp.  52,  53. 

'"Stand  and  strive" — thus  Kmerson  apostrophizes  the  poet  —  "until,  at 
last,  rage  draw  out  of  thee  that  dream-powrr,  wliii  li  cvrrv  nii'lit  shnws  thn-  is 
thine  own."    Essays,  "The  Poet." 


yif 


F.  C.  Prescott  49 

dreamer  is  fairlv  well  understood  suggests  that  its  operation 

in  the  poet  is  not  beyond  our  comprehension.     Its  poetical 

operation  is  perhaps  difficult  of  analysis,  because,  like  that 

of  the  dreamer,  it  is  an  unconscious  operation  and    cannot   be  ^ 

readily  observed.     Our  parallel,  however,  suggests  obvious 

lines  of  investigation  which  may  lead  to  a  definite  compre-  V" 

hension  of  the  creative  imagination,  as  it  works  not  only  in 

dreams  but  in  poetry.  V 

It   may   be   objected   that   the   explanation   of   poetry  w 

oflFered  in  the  preceding  pages  is  quite  theoretical,  formed 
without  sufficient  regard  for  actual  poetry;  that  in  any  given 
poem  there  is  much  which  is  not  at  all  referable  to  the  kind 
of  operation  that  I  have  been  describing;  indeed,  that  there  /  ^  '\ 
are  many  poems  which  show  no  trace  of  this  operation  and  ' 
\  bear  no  apparent  relation  to  it.  In  considering  this  objec- 
tion the  reader  will  in  the  first  place  kindly  keep  in  mind 
what  has  already  been  stated, —  namely,  that  this  explana- 
tion does  not  apply  to  all  that  goes  under  the  name  of  poetry, 
1  but  only  to  the  poetry  of  primary  inspiration.  He  will 
remember  also  that  even  the  Inspired  poet  is  not  always 
inspired.  He  is  inspired  only  in  those  poems  or  parts  of 
poems  that  are  most  vital  and  characteristic;  elsewhere  he  is 
himself  only  copying  the  forms  of  inspiration.  He  writes 
perhaps  through  a  long  poem  In  one  verse-form;  this  uni- 
formity tends  to  conceal  the  fact  that  the  different  parts  of 
the  poem  are  quite  different  in  their  nature  and  inspiration. 
Some  parts  are  written  with  vision;  they  come  from  the 
deep  unconscious  sources  that  have  been  referred  to.  Others 
are  written  with  the  conscious  mind;  these  are  the  work  of 
the  skilful  artificer,  not  of  the  true  poet.  The  latter  parts 
may  contain  material  of  any  sort  —  the  actual  history  and 
description  of  Scott  or  the  philosophy  which  we  could  so  ill 
spare  from  Shakespeare  —  whatever  the  writer  may  make 
congruous  with  his  inspired  portions  and  with  his  verse- 
form.  By  no  means  all  of  any  poem,  therefore,  will  be  poetry 
In  the  sense  In  which  we  are  using  the  term.  One  is  reminded 
of  Coleridge's  dictum  that  "a  poem  of  any  length  neither  can 
be  nor  ought  to  be  all  poetry,"  and  of  Poe's  that  a  long 
poem  Is  a  contradiction  In  terms. 

A  distinction  must  be  made  between  the  poetry  origi- 


50  Poetry  and  Dreads 

nally  formed  in  the  mind  of  the  poet  and  the  poem  as  it  is 
finally  committed  to  writing.  The  former  is  a  vision,  like  a 
dream  of  brief  duration,  coming  in  the  moments  of  rapture; 
the  latter  is  the  product  of  extended  labor.  "A  true  work 
'.of  art,"  says  Carlyle,  "requires  to  be  fused  in  the  mind  of 
its  creator,  and,  as  it  were,  poured  forth  (from  his  imagi- 
nation, though  not  from  his  pen)  at  one  simultaneous  gush."' 
Shelley  expresses  much  the  same  thought:  "The  toil  and 
delay  recommended  by  critics  can  be  justly  interpreted  to 
mean  no  more  than  a  careful  observation  of  the  inspired 
moments  and  an  artificial  connection  of  the  spaces  between 
their  suggestions  by  the  intertexture  of  conventional  expres- 
sions —  a  necessity  only  imposed  by  the  limitedness  of  the 
poetical  faculty  itself;  for  Milton  conceived  the  Paradise 
Lost  as  a  whole  before  he  executed  it  in  portions."" 

The  relation  between  the  poetic  vision  and  the  literary 
product  will  be  further  explained  by  another  reference  to 
the  dream  theory.  The  poetic  vision  is  perhaps  subjected 
to  a  process  similar  to  that  described  as  taking  place  in 
dreams  under  the  name  of  Secondary  Elaboration.^  This  is 
due  to  the  action  of  the  censor  and  arises  "from  the  activ- 
ity, not  of  the  underlying  dream  thoughts,  but  of  the  more 
conscious  mental  processes.  .  .  .  When  a  dream  is  appre- 
hended in  consciousness  [that  is,  recollected  on  waking],  it  is 
treated  in  the  same  way  as  any  other  perceptive  content, 
and  is  therefore  not  accepted  in  its  unaltered  state,  but  is 
assimilated  to  pre-existing  conceptions.  It  is  thus  to  a  cer- 
tain extent  remodeled  so  as  to  bring  it,  so  far  as  is  possible, 
into  harmony  with  the  other  conscious  mental  processes."* 
SQ_:\idi^«-thc_pQft  brings  his  vision  out  of  the  region  of  in- 
spiration into  the  everyday  world,  when  he  comes  con- 
sciously to  recollect  and  record  it,  he  doubtless  incvitabl\- 
modifies  it  to  bring  it  into  harmony  with  his  ordinary  waking 
thought.  When,  for  example,  Shelley  recorded  his  vision  in 
what  Trelawny  describes  as  a  "frightful  scrawl,"  even  in  this 
scrawl  made  almost  in  the  monu-nt  of  rapture,  lie  doubtless 

'Efisays,     Richtcr." 

•Defense  of  Poetry,  cd.  Cook,  p.  39. 

'Die  Traumdcutung,  VI  (h)- 

'E.  Jones,  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  XXI,  p.  297. 


F.  C.  Prescott  51 

lost  something  of  his  original  inspiration.  And  when  the 
next  morning  —  to  use  his  own  words  —  he  made  from  this 
rude  sketch  a  finished  drawing,  he  doubtless  lost  still  more. 
He  had  to  find  words  for  his  vision  in  the  language  of  this 
world,  he  had  to  mould  it  in  a  conventional  metrical  form, 
he  had  to  give  it  local  habitation  in  a  world  of  prose. 
There  was  more  poetry  in  Shelley's  heart  than  could  find 
expression  in  the  finished  lyric.     "The  most  glorious  poetry 

J:hat,,lias  ever  been  communicated  to  the  world,"  says  Shel- 
ley himself,  "is  probably  a  feeble  shadow  of  the  original 

^conceptions  of  the  poet."^  Truly — to  paraphrase  Emerson 
—  it  is  in  the  soul  that  poetry  exists,  and  our  poems  are  poor, 
far-behind  imitations.  At  best  parts  of  them  are  faintly 
animated  by  the  authentic  poetical  inspiration. 

IV 

We  must  now  return  to  those  "desires  of  the  mind,"  as 
Bacon  calls  them,  which  supply  the  motives  to  poetical  ac- 
tivity. Every  man  may  be  regarded  as  made  up  of  those  de- 
sires which  form  his  native  and  basic  character  —  of  those 
"cravings,"  to  use  Nietzsche's  phrase,  which  "constitute  his 
being."^  These  are  constantly  changing,  some  quickly 
passing,  others  perhaps  long  remaining;  but  at  any  moment 
each  man  has  a  certain  number  of  cravings,  which,  as 
Nietzsche  says,  call  for  sustenance;  he  has  a  certain  number 
of  demands  upon  life  which  he  wishes  to  have  satisfied  in  his 
experience.  These  demands  are  of  all  sorts  from  the  per- 
sonal and  immediate  bodily  desires,  like  those  for  food  and 
drink,  to  the  most  elevated  aspirations  —  like  the  one,  for 
example,  which  Matthew  Arnold  insisted  upon,  that  reason 
and  the  will  of  God  shall  prevail.  The  main  desires  are 
those  which  serve  the  preservation  of  life  and  the  propaga- 
tion of  the  species.  Perhaps  about  these  all  the  others 
gather;  the  others  are  these  great  main  desires  extended, 
specialized,  and  diffused.  Whatever  their  nature,  higher  or 
lower,  their  working  is  the  same  for  our  purposes  if  a  man 
desires  them  with  heart  and  soul.  These  desires  form  his 
character,  they  furnish  the  motive  energy  for  his  life.     They 

'Defense  of  Poetry,  ed.  Cook,  p.  39. 
-The  Dawn  of  Day,  p.  116. 


imm 


52  Poetry  and  Dreams 

set  in  motion  his  activities,  these  being  calculated  to  secure, 
if  possible,  the  appropriate  gratification. 

Our  comfort  and  happiness,  we  may  presume,  comes 
from  such  gratification.  That  man  would  be  completely 
happy  whose  desires  naturally  aroused  the  proper  activities, 
and  whose  activities  successfully  attained  their  end  in  grati- 
fication; between  whose  desires  and  experience  there  was 
perfect  correspondence.  On  the  other  hand,  a  man  would 
be  entirely  comfortable  in  mind  and  body  if  his  desires 
could  be  eradicated;  he  might  approach  happiness  by  elim- 
inating his  desires,  for,  as  Carlyle  observes,  you  get  the 
same  result  either  by  increasing  the  dividend  or  by  de- 
creasing the  divisor.  Complete  happiness,  however,  is 
denied  in  both  these  directions;  not  even  the  most  for- 
tunate man  finds  all  his  desires  gratified;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  by  no  sort  of  stoicism  can  man  reduce  his  demands  on 
life  to  the  point  of  vanishing.  Thus  e\'ery  man  inevitably 
has  his  desires,  some  of  which  must  be  satisfied  at  the  peril 
of  his  life,  others  of  which  are  only  a  little  less  imperative,  all 
of  which    are  insistent. 

Of  the  whole  number  of  desires  some  are  gratified,  and 
thus  ended;  others,  in  seeking  or  contemplating  gratifica- 
tion, encounter  obstacles,  giving  rise  to  disappointment, 
hunger,  and  pain  of  heart. 

These  obstacles  arise  in  outside  circumstances  in  vari- 
ous ways.  A  man  may  desire  something,  act  in  order  to 
obtain  it,  and  find  it  literally  snatched  away  from  him  by 
another.  He  may  see  that  gratification  is  impossible  and 
not  act  at  all;  the  obstacle  in  this  case  arises  in  his  own  mind 
antecedent  to  action.  He  may  wish  for  something  that 
is  physically  impossible  to  obtain  —  to  add  a  cubit  to  his 
stature  or  to  bring  back  his  departed  friend.  More  often, 
however,  he  meets  not  a  physical  but,  we  may  say,  a  moral 
obstacle.  He  wishes  for  something  which  he  does  not  think 
it  right,  which  he  knows  that  others  will  not  think  it  right, 
that  he  should  try  to  obtain.  He  must  consider  appearances, 
custom,  moral  obligations,  laws  human  and  divine.  Thus 
a  man  may  be  prevented  from  going  to  church  in  tennis  flan- 
nels, or  proclaiming  his  real  opinion  on  trial  marriages,  or 
bearing  false  witness  against  his  neighbor,  though  he  may 


F.  C.  Prescoit  53 

have  the  strongest  impulse  toward  any  of  these  things.  The 
obstacle  is  not  actual  and  physical;  it  exists  only  in  his  own 
mind  in  his  moral  scruples;  it  none  the  less  prevents  the 
satisfaction  of  his  desire. 

Thus  there  arises  a  conflict  between  the  individual's 
impulse  and  his  regard  for  the  authority  of  what  in  sociology 
is  called  the  herd.  Life  sometimes  seems  a  psychic  war 
between  man  and  society,  with  battles  waged  on  the  field  of 
the  mind, —  that  is,  in  the  mind  of  the  single  individual, — 
blows,  even  death  blows,  being  given  upon  this  field.  The 
conflict  runs  through  life.  Conduct  is  the  result  of  a  series 
of  compromises  or  adjustments  between  impulse  on  the  one 
hand  and  authority,  duty,  or  conscience,  on  the  other.  In 
dress,  for  example,  this  is  symbolized;  in  dress  we  express 
our  own  taste  within  the  limits  of  fashion.  In  our  writing 
we  give  utterance  to  our  own  thought  and  feeling  in  accord- 
ance with  the  traditions  and  usages  of  language  in  the  prosaic 
and  poetic  styles.  In  manners  we  act  as  we  like,  so  far  as 
our  breeding  or  training  will  allow.  In  moral  matters  we 
follow  the  devices  and  desires  of  our  own  hearts,  so  far  as  our 
moral  obligations  will  permit.  There  is  everywhere  this 
conflict  between  impulse  and  authority,  resulting  in  compro- 
mises more  or  less  satisfactory.  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  is 
a  study  of  such  a  conflict,  in  which  the  individual,  the  envi- 
ronment, and  the  reaction  of  one  upon  the  other,  with  its 
results,  are  put  before  us  by  a  master. 

Our  desires  are  primary  and  innate,  our  regard  for  out- 
side opinion  acquired.  The  savage  is  a  man  of  ungoverned 
passions;  civilization  is  a  long  training  in  self-government; 
the  civilized  man  has  come  to  feel  the  moral  obligations 
sensitively  and  to  respond  to  them  by  second  nature.  This 
response,  however,  never  becomes  better  than  second  nature; 
our  first  natiire  being  always  to  follow  our  own  desires.  In 
the  same  way  the  child  is  morally  still  in  the  savage  state.  \ 

He  is  born  with  his  own  native  character,  completely  an  in-  ^ 

dividual.  He  expresses  himself  naturally  and  lawlessly  in 
acts  and  speech.  He  satisfies  his  desires  selfishly,  eating 
and  sleeping,  and  as  he  grows  older,  loving  his  mother  who 
feeds  and  cares  for  him  —  in  this  way  first  learning  what 
love  is.     He  has  no  altruism,   frankly  disliking  his  rivals, 


54  Poetry  and  Dreams 

perhaps  his  brothers,  who  interfere  with  him, —  having  no 
compunction,  as  investigation  has  shown,  in  wishing  them 
removed  by  death.  Soon,  however,  he  begins  to  feel  the 
force  of  authority,  and  to  learn  from  parents  and  playmates 
the  meaning  of  duty,  obligation,  and  manners.  "Shades 
of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close  upon  the  growing  boy,"  and 
"the  years  bring  the  inevitable  yoke."  His  education  is  a 
long  training  in  the  government  of  the  impulses,  in  repres- 
sion,—  a  conservative  and  conventionalizing  process  under- 
taken by  society  in  its  own  interest.  Youth  is  subdued  by 
age  until  youth  becomes  age;  the  young  man  becomes  not 
merely  an  individual,  but  a  member  of  society,  helping  in 
turn  to  impose  the  authority  of  society  upon  others.  Thus 
the  child,  we  may  say,  the  moment  he  is  born  begins  to  die. 
The  spirit  first  animates  the  mortal  clay  and  then  is  quenched 
by  it.  For  the  spirit  of  life  is  in  these  impulses,  and  the  hand 
of  authority  is  the  hand  of  death.  The  dying  is  life-long, 
however;   it  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  protracted  conflict: 

"Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-colored  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity 
Until  death  tramples  it  to  fragments."' 

In  waking  hours,  in  hours  of  attention  and  action,  man 
feels  his  connection  and  responsibility;  he  feels  the  full 
weight  of  authority.  In  sleep,  in  abstraction,  in  solitude, 
he  feels  this  weight  fall  away;  he  becomes  an  individual; 
he  begins  to  dream.  As  dreamer  and  poet  he  returns,  as 
we   have   seen,   to  childhood   and   the   individual    life, — •  to 

"Those  first  affections, 
Those  shadowy  recollections, 
Which,  be  they  what  they  may, 
Are  yet  the  fountain  light  of  all  our  day 
Are  yet  the  master  light  of  all  our  seeing."' 

This  is  a  truth  which  all  of  us  except  the  poets  have 
forgotten  —  that  life  and  vision  and  poetry,  which  belong  to 
us  all  until  we  die,  belong  in  fullest  measure  to  childhood. 
We  see  it  symbolized  in  the  early  religious  paintings  of 
the  holy  child  in  his  mother's  arms,  his  head  surrounded  by 

'Shelley,  "Adonais." 

'Wordsworth,    'Intimations  of  Inimortality." 


'M 


F.  C.  Prescott  55 

the  halo,  with  the  Inscription,  "I  am  the  light  of  the  world." 
We  read  it  in  the  quaint  poems  of  Vaughan  who,  shining  in 
his  angel-infancy, 

"Felt  through  all  this  fleshly  dress 
Bright  shoots  of  everlastingness." 

We  read  it  everywhere  in  Wordsworth,  above  all,  in  the 
wonderful  Ode,  which  is  its  best  exposition: 

"Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy! 
Shades  of  the  prison  house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  boy. 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows, 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy; 
The  Youth  who  daily  further  from  the  East 
Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  priest, 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 

Is  on  his  way  attended;  . 

At  length  the  Man  perceives  it  die  away  | 

And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

**Thou  whose  exterior  semblance  doth  belie 
Thy  soul's  immensity; 
Thou  best  Philosopher,  who  yet  dost  keep 

Thy  heritage,  thou  Eye  among  the  blind. 
That  deaf  and  silent,  read'st  the  eternal  deep, 

Haunted  forever  by  the  eternal  mind, — 
Mighty  prophet!     Seer  blest! 
On  whom  those  truths  do  rest. 

Which  we  are  toiling  all  our  lives  to  find, 
In  darkness  lost,  the  darkness  of  the  grave; 
Thou,  over  whom  thy  Immortality 
Broods  like  the  day,  a  Master  o'er  a  Slave, 
A  Presence  which  is  not  to  be  put  by; 
Thou  little  child,  yet  glorious  in  the  might 
Of  Heaven-born  freedom  on  thy  being's  height. 
Why  with  such  earnest  pains  dost  thou  provoke 
The  years  to  bring  the  inevitable  yoke. 
Thus  blindly  with  thy  blessedness  at  strife? 
Full  soon  thy  soul  shall  have  her  earthly  freight. 


56  Poetry  and  Dreams 

And  custom  lie  upon  thee  with  a  weight, 
Heavy  as  frost,  and  deep  almost  as  life!"' 

The  true  poet  is  born,  not  made.  .  The  acquirements 
which  are  so  much  in  demand  tor  practical  and  social  ends 
come  by  education;  the  impulses  which  are  the  life  of  genius, 
especially  of  the  poetic  genius,  are  innate,  a  heritage  through 
childhood.  The  possession  of  these  in  a  marked  degree  and 
quality,  which  distinguishes  those  we  call  specially  poets, 
comes  as  a  gift  from  nature. 

The  desires  of  mankind  furnish  the  energy  which  moves 

I  the  world  and  makes  for  progress.  In  each  man  they  pro- 
mote his  activities  and  lead  to  accomplishment,  inspiring 
I  him  to  find  a  way  to  this  and  as  a  means  to  invent  the  useful 
arts.  "Magister  artis  ingenique  largitor  venter."^  Neces- 
\L  sity  is  the  mother  of  invention  —  not  only  in  the  useful  arts 
^  but  in  the  fine  arts  also.  It  is  these  desires,  as  has  been  said, 
which  inspire  dreams  by  night  and  by  day,  including  the 
dreams  of  the  poet.  Not  finding  outlet  in  activity  and  de- 
nied actual  gratification  they  provide  for  themselves  a  fic- 
tional gratification,  creating  through  the  imagination  what 
is  wanting  in  reality.  They  create  an  ideal  world,  parallel 
with,  but  above  and  beyond  that  of  reality;  "a  purified  form 
of  reality,"  according  to  Aristotle,  "disengaged  from  ac- 
cident, and  freed  from  conditions  which  thwart  its  devel- 
bpment";^ —  an  ideal  world,  which,  we  may  imagine,  through 
some  pre-established  harmony  between  mind  and  nature,  the 
world  of  reality  tends  to  approach  and  grow  into.  Those 
arts  in  which  this  dream  power  is  at  work  we  call  the  fine 
arts;  they  have  what  we  call  ideal  beauty,  and  give  us  a 
pleasure  of  gratification. 

These  desires  do  not,  however,  express  themselves  in 
dreams  or  poetry  unhampered  —  except,  we  may  imagine,  in 
children.  They  meet  that  opposing  force  of  authority  which 
gives  rise  to  the  censor  of  the  dream  theory  and  to  the  cor- 

'Comparc  Wordsworth,  Composed  ujxjn  an  EvcniiiR  of  Lxtraordiiury 
Splendour  and  Beauty,"  IV,  with  its  reference  to  dreams;  "Personal  Talk;" 
"Prelude,"  Hook  II;  Shelley,  'A  Lament";  Hood,  "1  Remember";  Gray,  'Eton 
College";   Longfellow,  "The  Hanging  of  the  Crane." 

'Pcrsius,  Prologue,  I,  10. 

'Butcher,  Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry,  p.  LSO. 


f-'  I 


F.  C.  Prescott  57 

responding  regulative,  controlling,  and  disintegrating  force 
which  is  at  work  in  the  production  of  poetry.  Here  again 
life  animates  the  mortal  clay  and  is  in  turn  quenched  by 
it.  The  poetic  spirit  finds  its  incarnation  and  partial  ex- 
pression in  the  fictions  and  conventional  forms  which  we  call 
poetry.     In  poetry  the  word  is  made  flesh. 

We  have  been  considering  mainly  the  individual  poet. 
We  may  perhaps  regard  man  as  a  microcosfn~of  mankind, 
and  the  larger  life  of  mankind  as  the  resultant  from  the  same 
conflict  of  opposing  forces, —  between  the  individual  and 
society,  between  men  taken  separately  and  men  taken  to- 
gether as  a  unit.  We  may  perhaps  regard  imaginative  liter- 
ature as  a  whole  —  the  literature,  for  example,  of  a  period  or 
a  nation  —  as  determined  by  these  same  opposing  forces. 

The  terms  classicism  and  romanticism  have  been  com- 
mon in  literary  history  and  criticism.  They  have  been  often 
abused  and  often  used  vaguely.  Every  student  of  literary 
history,  however,  knows  that  they  relate  to  actualities, 
that  they  serve  to  name,  if  not  to  explain,  certain  observed 
facts  and  tendencies  in  literature.  The  difficulty  is  not 
with  the  terms,  but  with  the  definition  or  explanation  of 
them.  Accounts  of  the  so-called  "romantic  movement,"  for 
example,  give  instances  and  characteristics  which  everyone 
feels  to  be  somehow  "romantic"  and  related,  but  do  not 
amount  to  satisfactory  explanations,  because  they  do  not 
unify  the  phenomena  by  bringing  them  under  a  cause  or 
principle.  The  principles  which  best  explain  romanticism 
and  classicism  are  well  stated  in  two  words  by  Walter  Pater, 
as  "the  principles  of  liberty,  and  authority,  respectively."^ 
These  principles.  Pater  says,  are  not  mutually  exclusive,  but 
rather  complementary.  "However  falsely  those  two  ten- 
dencies may  be  opposed  by  the  critics,  or  exaggerated  by 
artists  themselves,  they  are  tendencies  really  at  work  at  all 
times  in  art,  molding  it,  with  the  balance  sometimes  a  little 
on  one  side,  sometimes  a  little  on  the  other,  generating,  re- 
spectively, as  the  balance  Inclines  on  this  side  or  that,  two 
principles,  two  traditions,  in  art  and  in  literature."'  Lit- 
erature, in  other  words.  Is  the  result  of  a  conflict  between 

'Appreciations,'  Postscript." 


58  Poetry  and  Dreams 

the  individual  impulse,  tlie  life-giving  and  progressive  prin- 
ciple, on  the  one  hand,  and  the  power  of  authority,  the  con- 
trolling and  conservative  principle,  on  the  other.  Both  of 
these  forces  are  always  at  work;  but  according  as  one  or  the 
other  has  in  any  period  the  upper  hand,  we  call  that  period 
romantic  or  classical. 

The  literature  of  England  and  generally  of  Northern 
Europe  is  romantic;  that  is,  in  the  northern  literature  the 
vital  impulse  has  always  more  than  held  its  own  against  the 
force  of  authority.  The  conflict,  however,  has  been  strenu- 
ous. The  northern  genius  expressed  itself  characteristically 
in  the  Gothic  architecture  of  the  Middle  Ages.  We  can 
understand  this  expression  if  we  think  of  these  northern 
peoples  as  they  first  appeared  in  history,  full  of  youth  and 
life  and  energy,  with  strong  bodies  and  strong  emotions; 
if  we  think  of  them  subjected,  in  a  comparatively  brief  time, 
through  their  introduction  to  civilization  and  Christianity, 
to  the  control  of  older  laws  and  the  ordinances  of  a  religion 
which  placed  the  main  emphasis  on  the  mortification  of  the 
flesh.  Their  pent  energy  expressed  itself  in  this  architec- 
ture, the  product  of  great  genius  under  unwonted  pressure; 
it  was  forced  up  into  the  points  and  pinnacles,  broken  into 
the  colors  of  the  windows,  tortured  into  the  grotesque  forms 
and  monstrous  figures  of  the  decorations.  It  subjected  itself 
to  form  —  to  a  form,  however,  which  it  seems  to  toler- 
ate uneasily,  which  it  threatens  to  throw  off  in  order  to  secure 
its  liberty.  This  is  characteristic  of  the  northern  art  and 
literature,  which  retain  a  wildness,  grotesqueness,  and 
freedom  to  the  present  day. 

We  may  be  sure  that  the  human  creative  energy,  like 
energy  in  every  other  form,  comes  not  constantly  but  inter- 
mittently, or  in  waves, —  waves  century  long,  however,  so 
that  we  can  look  back  over  only  a  small  number  of  these  in 
our  literary  history.  The  Elizabethan  period  felt  such  an 
influx  of  energy.  It  was  a  time  of  individualism,  of  youth, 
of  progress,  and  therefore,  as  we  should  expect,  a  time  of  in- 
itiative, activity,  curiosity,  invention,  itnaglnalion.  "To 
vent  the  feelings,  to  satisfy  the  heart  and  eyes,  to  set  free 
boldly  on  all  the  roads  of  existence  the  pack  of  appetites 
and   instiiKts,   this,"   says  Taiiie,   "was   the  craving  which 


F.   C.  Prescott  59 

the  manners  of  the  time  betrayed."^  In  the  world  of  action 
it  produced  men  like  John  Smith,  a  kind  of  great  boy,  as 
fresh,  active,  and  adventurous  as  Ulysses.  In  the  world  of 
letters  it  produced  men  like  Christopher  Marlowe,  the  type 
of  genius  fresh  and  uncontrolled, —  a  man  who 

"Had  in  him  those  brave  translunary  things 
That  the  first  poets  had."= 

^Its  writers  were  full  of  passion,  originality,  and  imagina- 
tion; they  were  impatient  of  form  as  form,  having  a  natural 
rather  than  a  traditional  art;  as  artists  they  were  naive, 
even  boyish,  playing  and  experimenting  with  literary  forms 
and  with  language,  fond  of  the  verbal  conceits  and  jingles 
that  boys  delight  in.  Shakespeare  is  a  good  representative 
of  this  remarkable  time. 

While  Shakespeare  lived,  however,  the  wave  began  to 
recede,  and  in  the  Jacobean  writers  passion  grew  pale  and 
imagination  feeble.  The  force  of  authority  asserted  itself. 
Ben  Jonson  and  his  classical  followers  were  not  satisfied 
with  Shakespeare's  natural  art;  to  them  Shakespeare  wanted 
art.  "Suifiaminandus  erat,"  said  Jonson,^  —  "he  ought  to 
have  had  the  brakes  put  on  him" — and  this  sums  up  the  atti- 
tude of  authority  toward  Shakespeare  and  its  hostility  to 
the  romantic  spirit.  Dryden's  expression,  however,  may  be 
added.  Representing  the  adult  and  Frenchified  criticism  of 
the  Restoration,  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  has  grown  and 
traveled,  he  says  of  the  boyish  exuberance  of  the  Elizabeth- 
ans.—  "Their wit  was  not  that  of  gentlemen,"  and  "it  fre- 
quently descended  to  clenches." 

The  classical  critics  found  standards  for  judging  the 
Elizabethans  where  they  are  usually  found  — ■  in  the  past. 
The  effort  of  authority  is  always  to  bind  the  present  by  the 
past.  Modern  writers,  it  should  be  noted,  may  return  to 
the  classics  for  two  purposes, —  some,  like  Marlowe  and 
Keats,  to  stand  "up  to  the  chin  in  the  Pierian  flood,"  and  to 

•History  of  English  Literature,  Book  II,  Chap.  I,  Sec.  3. 
'Drayton,  "To  H.  Reynolds."  -^^ 

*Jonson,  Timber,  and  Dryden,  Dramatic  Poetry  of  the  Last  Age.  Both 
Jonson  and  Dryden,  in  speaking  of  Shakespeare,  more  often  acknowledge  their 
kinship  and  admiration;  but  then  they  are  not  speaking  with  the  voice  of  author-  ,•' 

ity.  '  I 


I 


60  Poetry  and  Dreams 

live  with  those  first  poets  who  **are  yet  the  fountain  light  of 
all  our  day";  others,  like  Jonson  and  Pope,  to  find  laws  and 
precedents.  The  former  go  generally  to  Homer  and  the 
Greeks,  the  latter  to  the  Latin  poets,  particularly  to  Horace. 
The  main  characteristic  of  the  writers  in  our  so-called  classi- 
cal period  was  not  that  they  returned  to  the  classics,  or 
that  their  work  is  marked  by  traits  conspicuous  in  the  clas- 
sics, but  that  they  made  authority  the  guide  of  life  and  sought 
authority  in  Homer  and  \  irgil,  Aristotle  and  Horace. 

"Hear  how  learned  Greece  her  useful  rules  indites, 
When  to  repress,  and  when  indulge  our  flights. 

"Learn  hence  for  ancient  rules  a  just  esteem; 
To  copy  nature  is  to  copy  them."' 

The  period  from  the  Restoration  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 

Jentury  is  best  explained  by  this  key  idea.  It  was  social, 
rowning  upon  individuality  —  a  time  of  rigid  conventional- 
ity, when  one  man  was  expected  to  be  like  another  in  dress, 
manners,  language,  and  style.  It  was  sophisticated  and 
cynical, —  as  if  age  had  come  upon  it  since  the  time  of 
Shakespeare, —  "a  decrepit,  death-sick  era,"  Carlylc  calls 
the  latter  part  of  it.  It  was  reflective  and  critical  rather 
than  progressive  and  creative.  It  was  strong  in  its  common 
sense,  which  recognizes  the  demands  of  society.  In  litera- 
ture it  was  an  age  of  prose  and  reason;  it  produced  satires 
and  novels;  it  perfected  the  heroic  couplet.  It  produced 
men  like  Pope  and  Chesterfield  and  Franklin,  sane  men,  who 
saw  no  visions  and  had  no  illusions.  A  very  valuable  period 
this  no  doubt  was  too;  not  to  be  underestimated,  but  rather 
to  be  seen  for  what  it  is;  for,  if  man  cannot  live  by  bread 
alone,  in  this  world  at  an\'  rate  bread  is  necessar)';  man  must 
think  as  well  as  dream;  art  is  necessary  as  well  as  inspira- 
tion, and  we  may  suppose  the  eighteenth  centur\'  well  spent 
in  criticism  and  reflection. 

The  nineteenth  ccntur\-,  however,  broke  the  bonds  of 

"^authority  and  reasserted  the  power  of  the  individual.     Rous- 

/  seau  sounded  the  new  note  in  the  first  page  o{  Jiis Confessions: 

"I  am  not  made  like  any  one  else,  1  ha\e  e\er  known;    yet 

'Popc/'Essay  on  Criticism." 


\ 


r^ 


F.   C.   Prescott  61 

if  I  am  not  better,  at  least  I  am  different."  These  words 
introduce  another  era  of  creative  energy: 

"BHss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  aUve; 
But  to  be  young  was  very  heaven."^ 

We  need  not  stop  to  characterize  this  "romantic  movement," 
with  its  rejuvenation  of  English  life  and  literature,  except 
to  note  that  one  of  its  traits  was  a  strain  of  melancholy, 
morbidity,  and  madness,  which  hardly  finds  its  parallel  in 
the  earlier  romantic  era.  The  author  of  Hamlet  must  have 
sounded  the  gloomy  depths  of  the  human  mind,  but  he  always 
kept  up  appearances.  The  abandonment  of  Rousseau,  of 
Werther  and  Rene  and  Childe  Harold,  is  new  in  the  nine- 
teenth century.  There  is  an  apparent  difference  in  mental 
constitution  between  the  men  of  letters  of  this  period  and 
those  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  latter  —  Addison, 
Steele,  Pope,  Fielding,  Johnson,  Goldsmith,  Burke  —  what- 
ever their  bodily  infirmities,  were  pre-eminently  sane  in 
mind.  Even  Swift,  whose  insanity  was  probably  due  to 
physical  causes,  could  look  at  life  clearly.  The  romantic 
writers,  with  the  exception  of  Scott, —  Chatterton,  Cowper, 
and  Blake;  Wordsworth,^  Coleridge,  and  Southey;  Byron, 
Shelley,  and  Keats;  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  and  DeQuincey  —  all 
these  were  in  some  way  mentally  eccentric  or  abnormal. 
For  one  reason  or  another  they  would  have  seemed  "  strange  " 
to  a  belated  observer  from  the  polite  and  sensible  eighteenth 
century.  It  would  seem  —  if  a  conclusion  can  be  dra^n 
from  evidence  like  this  — that  something  in  the  romantic 
temper,  with  its  individualism,  its  passion,  its  fondness  for 
solitude  and  hatred  of  society,  were  conducive  to  mental 
aberration.  Perhaps  an  explanation  for  this  will  be  found 
in  the  following  pages. 

We  have  seen  that  life  may  be  regarded  as  a  conflict  N      -^'^ 
between   the   individual   and   society;^,  that  poetry  has   its     \ 
origin  in  a  conflict  between  the  poet's  egoistic  desires  or 
impulses  on  the  one  hand  and  his  regard  for  what  we  have 
called  authority  on  the  other; 'that,  to  some  extent  at  least, 

'Worc'sworth,  Prelude,  Book  XI. 

'Some  readers  may  object  to  the  inclusion  of  Wordsworth  here,  and  I  have  no 
objection  to  omission. 


fmmmmmtmmHnmmt 


62  Poetry  and  Dreams 

''  literature  may  be  explained  as  resultant  from  a  similar  con- 
flict between  similar  opposing  forces.  V'  In  this  same  conflict 
will  perhaps  be  found  the  explanation  of  another  peculiarity 
of  poetic  production  which  we  have  not  yet  considered.     Let 

v^^us  see. 

V 


\1 


We  shall  have  to  return  again  to  the  desires  of  the 
mind.  Satisfied  desires  are  ended.  Unsatisfied  desires  give 
rise  to  feelings  of  ^^satisfaction,  to  unpleasant  or  pain- 
ful sensations,  to  some  degree  of  emotional  disturbance, — 
\  if  this  disturbance  is  severe,  to  what  we  call  passion.  This 
'  is  what  we  have  in  mind  when  we  say  colloquially  that  we 
are  passionately  fond  of  a  thing,  or  simply  that  we  have  a 
passion  for  it.^  The  word  passion  is  commonly  applied  to 
one  of  our  main  or  fundamental  desires,  the  sexual  one,  and 
only  when  satisfaction  of  this  desire  is  deferred;  the  satisfied 
lover  is  no  longer  passionate;  it  is  only  the  lover  who  is 
separated  from  his  mistress  who  is  consumed  by  passion.  It 
may  be  thought  that  the  passion  of  love  is  mainly  pleasurable 
but  observation  will  probably  show,  as  a  consideration  of  its 
nature  will  suggest,  that  its  main  element  is  one  of  dissatis- 
faction and  unpleasurable.^  As  this  is  the  one  of  our  funda- 
mental desires  which  most  often  conflicts  with  external 
authority,  in  some  one  of  its  forms  —  as  this  desire  is  most 
often  subject  to  repression — it  probably  is  most  often  re- 
lieved in  dreams  and  poetry.^  A  great  part  of  imaginative 
literature  —  not  merely  love  poems  and  tales,  but  much 
which  on  its  face  does  not  relate  to  this  subject  —  is  probably 
a  sublimated  expression  of  the  sexual  desire.  This  thrt)ws 
light  also  on  the  analogy,  which  is  suggested  by  language 
and    by   other   evidence,    between    actual    or    physiological 

'The  reason  why  we  say  we  arc  "mad"  or  "crazy"  about  a  tiling  will  appear 
in  a  moment. 

'Cf.  Freud,  Three  Contributions  to  the  Sexual  Theory,  translated  by  A.  A. 
Brill,  p.  60. 

'This  statement,  as  far  as  it  concerns  dreams  and  neurotic  mnnifcstatiuns,  is 
supported  by  the  investigations  of  Dr.  Freud.  Dr.  Freud  has  been  blamed  for  the 
preoccupation  of  his  psychology  with  the  sexual.  It  may  be  noted  that  imagina- 
tive literature  is  preoccupied  with  the  same  subject,  particularly  plays  and  novels. 


F.   C.  Prescott 


63 


creation    and    imaginative    creation;     this    analogy    is    not 
fanciful.' 

The  unsatisfied  lov^er  proverbially  breaks  out  in  verse, 
taking  refuge  in  this  indirect  expression  and  gratification 
when  others  more  actual  are  denied  him.  The  lover  on  the 
authority  of  Shakespeare  is  one  of  those  who  are  of  imagina- 
tion all  compact.  According  to  Shakespeare,  also,  unsatis- 
fied love  leads  to  madness.  Romeo  is  thought  next  door  to 
it.  "Why,  Romeo,  art  thou  mad.?"  Benvolio  asks  him, 
and  Mercutio  calls,  "Romeo!  humours!  madman!  passion! 
lover!"  Hamlet  is  in  love,  and  thought  by  Polonius,  who 
is  doubtless  not  entirely  wrong,  to  be  "from  his  reason 
fall'n  thereon."  Hamlet,  by  the  way,  also  has  "  bad  dreams." 
Ophelia  goes  mad  for  love : 

"O  heavens!  is't  possible,  a  young  maid's  wits 
Should  be  as  mortal  as  an  old  man's  life? 
Nature  is  fine  in  love,  and  where  'tis  fine. 
It  sends  some  precious  instance  of  itself 
After  the  thing  it  loves." 

Ophelia's  songs,  moreover,  are  the  appropriate  expression  of 
her  thwarted  love  and  consequent  madness  —  a  natural 
poetry,  well  illustrating,  though  they  are  only  those  of  a 
dramatis  persona,  what  we  have  said  of  the  origin  of  poetry.^ 
Ophelia  illustrates  also  some  earlier  lines  of  Shake- 
speare, for  she  is  at  once  lunatic,  lover,  and  poet: 

"Lovers  and  madmen  have  such  seething  brains, 
Such  shaping  fantasies,  that  apprehend 
More  than  cool  reason  ever  comprehends; 
The  lunatic,  the  lover,  and  the  poet 
Are  of  imagination  all  compact."^ 

There  is  much  meaning  condensed  in  the  celebrated  pas- 
sage in  which  these  lines  occur,  and  it  may  be  reperused  with 

'See  the  section  on  this  subject  in  Ribot,  L'Imagination  Cicatrice,  p.  62. 

'It  may  be  urged  that,  as  Mrs.  Jameson  suggests,  Ophelia  is  here  recalling 
snatches  of  old  ballads  heard  in  infancy;  but  the  expression  is  at  any  rate  a  poetic 
one,  in  the  sense  of  this  discussion;  and,  being  doubtless  in  part  at  least  extempore, 
it  represents  just  that  fusion  of  elements  from  childhood  and  recent  experience 
which  we  have  found  to  be  characteristic  of  the  poetic  expression  in  general. 

'Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  Act.  V,  Sc.  1. 


64  Poetry  and  Dreams 

f     profit  by  anyone  who  has  followed  this  discussion  thus  far.' 

/^^    The  point  in  it  to  our  present  purpose  is  the  common  char- 

\  acter  which  Shakespeare  attributes  to  the  lover, —  or  may 

\^e  say  generally  the  man  unsatisfied?  —  the  madman,  and 

the   poet. 

Not  every  man  who  wants  gratification,  of  course,  is 
mad  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term.     The  fact  is  only 
this:  that  the  conflict  we  have  described  between  the  desires 
\    and  fact  or  authority  produces  friction,  heat,  emotional  dis- 
1\  turbance,  which  tends  to  impede    and    incapacitate  "cool 
1\  reason," — which,   if  carried    far    enough,   will    completely 
\  ^overthrow  it  and  end   in  irrationality  and  madness.     The 
1^  ]|nental  condition  of  ecstasy  may  even  be  brought  on  arti- 
ificially  —  as  it  was  by  St.  Simon  and  others  —  through  fast- 
ing,   sexual    abstinence,    and    isolation.     Now    the    conflict 
between  desire  and  fact  or  authority  is  characteristic  of  the 
poet,  and  in  the  poet  also  it  produces  friction,  emotional 
disturbance,    a     suspension,    even    an    unbalancing    of    the 
reason  —  what  we  call  the  poetic  madness. 

Light  is  thrown  on  this  subject  by  recent  investigations 
in  mental  pathology.  Dr.  Freud  and  others  have  found  that 
many  cases  of  psychoneurosis,  ranging  from  slight  mental 
disturbances  to  what  would  amount  to  legal  insanity,  are  due 
to  the  noxious  effects  of  repressed  material  in  the  mind.  In 
these  cases  the  patient  has  at  some  time,  perhaps  even  in 
childhood,  felt  certain  strong  desires;  he  has  found  these 
for  some  reason  incompatible  with  the  facts  of  life,  and  has 
consequently  repressed  them.  They  arc  thus  driven  back 
into  unconsciousness;  the  patient  himself  has  no  knowledge 
of  them.  They  continue  operative,  however,  causing  various 
neurotic  symptoms  —  day  dreams,  violent  hallucinations, 
involuntary  speeches  and  actions  —  wiiich  provide  for  them, 
so  to  speak,  a  symbolic  fictional  gralificalion."  For  example, 
the  speeches  and  actions  of  the  patient,  through  a  species  of 

1'It  is  notable  that  this  passage  occurs  in  the  most  poetical  of  Shakespeare's 
^dramas  —  one  which  he  entitled  a  dream,  and  which  has  many  dream  qualities. 
One  mi^lit  imaf,'ine  that  his  attention  had  been  called  to  tiic  "dream  power"  by 
his  own  mental  experiences,  and  that  he  pondered  the  subject  which  we  arc  trying 
to  discuss  here. 

'Sec  K.  Abraham,  Jaiirbuch  fiir  psychoanalytischc  und  psychopathologische 
Forschungcn,  Vol.  II,  "Ubcr  hyslcrischc  Traumzustandc." 


?v;i 


F.  C.  Prescott 


65 


''displacement"  or  transference,  one  thing  standing  for  or 
symbolizing  another  through  obscure  associations,  become 
an  unusual  or  abnormal  outlet  for  unconscious  impulses,  to 
which  on  their  face  they  seem  in  no  way  related.  Thus 
nervous  or  hysterical  manifestations  which  once  seemed 
meaningless  and  mysterious  are  now  traced  to  their  definite 
origin  in  the  patient's  mental  processes.  If  these  uncon- 
scious desires  are  brought  to  light,  rationalized,  and  given 
proper  expression  their  noxious  influence  ceases  and  the 
strange  symptoms  disappear;  and  this  fact  has  supplied  a 
cure  of  practical  value  in  such  cases.  The  repressed  material 
forms  a  "painful  and  disturbing  element  in  the  organism," 
to  use  the  phrase  employed  by  Professor  Butcher  in  describ- 
ing the  Aristotelian  katharsis,  and  the  cure  consists  in  the 
"elimination  of  alien  matter."  Now  to  apply  this  to  the 
subject  in  hand  —  here  is  a  mental  derangement  or  madness, 
resulting  from  what  maybe  called  mental  friction,  produced 
by  the  conflict  between  desires  and  obligations.  The  poetic 
madness  is  analogous,  arising  in  the  same  conflict,  and 
,  poetry  is  in  some  respects  analogous  to  the  neurotic  symp- 
toms noted  above.  Ophelia's  songs  will  perhaps  again  serve 
to  bridge  for  the  reader's  mind  the  gap  between  the  two:  we 
may  suppose  these  songs  to  be  not  only  natural  poetry,  as 
[we  have  seen,  but  the  manifestation  of  a  neurosis. 

So,  if,  as  Keble  says,  "to  innumerable  persons  poetry 
acts  as  a  safety-valve,  tending  to  preserve  them  from  mental 
disease,"  it  is  from  a  disease  of  this  sort,  from  what  would 
be  called  in  modern  pathology  a  neurosis.  As  the  reader 
will  remember  that  dreams  have  a  similar  function,  it  is  not 
remarkable  that  Dr.  Freud  has  found  that  the  dreams  of  his 
neurotic  patients  deal  largely  with  the  same  subject-matter 
which  gives  rise  to  their  neurotic  symptoms.  So  much  is 
this  true  that  the  patient's  dreams  supply  one  of  the  means 
regularly  employed  in  discovering  the  hidden  causes  of  the 
disease.  It  is  not  strange,  moreover,  that  poets  should  be, 
as  we  have  seen,  great  dreamers,  since  their  mental  condition 
is  one  approaching  a  neurosis. 

This  will  help  to  explain  recent  works,  like  those  of 
Dr.  Nordau  and  Lombroso,  which  attempt  to  show  that 
poets  are  often  "degenerates,"  and  the  ease  with  which  they 


ifa 


66  Poetry  and  Dreams 

supply  evidence  lending  apparent  support  to  their  theories. 
Such  evidence  can  be  found  in  the  lives  of  many  poets. 
These  poets  are  not,  however,  degenerates;'  they  are  not 
even  necessarily  to  be  called  abnormal  or  diseased.  The 
mental  sanity  of  the  poet  has  been  often  questioned.  Lamb, 
in  a  well-known  essay,  defends  the  "sanity  of  true  genius."' 
Heine  suggests  the  opposite  view:  "Oder  ist  die  Poesie  viel- 
leicht  eine  Krankheit  des  Menschen,  wie  die  Pcrle  eigent- 
lich  nur  der  Krankheitsstoff  ist,  woran  das  arme  Austertier 
leidet."^  '  It  is,  however,  alike  vain  and  unscientific  to  dis- 
cuss the  question  whether  poets  are  mentally  diseased  or 
not,  the  line  between  mental  health  and  disease  being  a  vague 
'or  imaginary  one;  and  the  poet  at  most  only  showing  in 
greater  degree  traits  which  are  common  to  all  men,  all  men 
being  dreamers,  poets,  and  neurotics  in  some  measure. 
We  can  only  say  that  poets  are  inevitably  subject  to  mental 
disturbance,  which  may  go  so  far  as  to  make  them  "pecul- 
iar" or  incapable  of  discharging  the  ordinary  duties  of 
society.' 

Let  us  return  to  the  emotional  disturbance  regularly 
'incident  to  the  production  of  poetry  —  to  the  classical 
poetic  madness.  This  word  must  apply  to  various  kinds  of 
disturbance, —  at  least  to  the  same  disturbance  in  very 
varying  degrees.  With  Sir  Walter  Scott  we  may  suppose 
madness  to  have  amounted  only  to  a  genial  glow,  perhaps 
for  the  reason  that  his  ruling  passion  was  of  a  mild  kind,  of 
long  duration,  and,  so  to  speak,  diffused.  For,  as  Keble 
observes,  "the  mind  has  its  r^d-q  as  well  as  its  iraOt),  —  its  per- 
manent tastes,  habits,  inclinations,  which,  when  directly 
checked,  are  as  capable  of  relief  by  poetical  expression  as  the 
more  hidden  and  violent  emotions."*  With  a  poet  like  Shelley 
the  madness  may  rise  to  a  higher  but  temporary  disturbance 
—  a  rapture  or  even  a  fine  frenzy.  With  Coleridge,  or  Do 
Quincey,  or  Foe,  it  may  take  peculiar  forms  because  compli- 
cated with  the  effects  of  alcohol  or  opium,  resorted  to  per- 
haps for  alleviation,  the  poetic  product  in  these  cases  having 

'See  the  argument  in  Hirsch,  Genius  and  Degeneration. 
'Essays  of  Elia,   'The  Sanity  of  True  Genius." 
'Die  Romantische  Schuie,  II,  iv. 
The  British  Critic,  Vol.  XXIV,  p.  439 


'r 


F.  C.  Prescott 


G7 


quite  unusual  coloring.  With  Blake  it  may  be  an  almost 
uninterrupted  and  life-long  ecstasy,  to  his  friends  indistin- 
guishable from  insanity.  Finally,  it  may  lead  to,  or  at 
least  be  associated,  with,  actual  madness,  as,  perhaps,  in 
Cowper  or  de  Maupassant.  In  the  cases  of  Ben  Jonson, 
Swift,  and  Southey,  who  were  attacked  by  insanity,  we 
cannot  be  sure  what  connection,  if  any,  there  was  between 
the  poetic  faculty  and  the  mental  derangement.  In  Lamb 
we  feel  perhaps  that  the  dream  power,  the  poetic  madness, 
and  the  insanity  were  somehow  closely  connected.  Perhaps 
an  average  or  typical  case  would  be  that  of  Byron,  who  says 
in  Childe  Harold: 

''I  have  thought 
Too  long  and  darkly,  till  my  brain  became, 
In  its  own  eddy  boiling  and  o'erwrought 
A  whirling  gulf  of  phantasy  and  flame." 

Or,  as  he  says  in  his  letter,  after  speaking  of  this  poem  as 
his  favorite:  "I  was  half  mad  during  the  time  of  its  compo- 
sition, between  metaphysics,  mountains,  lakes,  love  unextin- 
guishable,  thoughts  unutterable,  and  the  nightmare  of  my 
own  delinquencies."^  We  do  not  know,  however,  definitely 
what  Byron  means  by  this  half  madness. 

The  madness  is  different  in  character  and  degree  in 
different  poets;  but,  in  some  sense  and  in  some  degree,  the 
true  poet  will  always  be  mad.  We  have  it  on  the  authority 
of  a  long  line  of  poets  and  critics,  reaching  back  to  the 
oldest.  The  locus  classicus  occurs  in  the  well-known  pas- 
sage in  the  Phaedrus,  in  which  Socrates  is  made  to  divide 
madness  into  four  kinds."  Of  these  the  first  and  the  fourth 
belong  to  the  prophet  and  the  lover.  The  second  is  less 
familiar  to  us;  it  is  the  madness  which  "purges  away  ancient 
wrath,"  emotional  excitement  being  used,  apparently  in  the 
way  described  by  Aristotle,  to  drive  out  harmful  emotional 
disturbances,  by  a  homeopathic  and  cathartic  method,  re- 
storative of  mental  sanity.^  "  He  who  has  part  in  this  gift, " 
says  Plato,  "and  is  truly  possessed  and  duly  out  of  his 
mind,  is  by  the  use  of  purifications  and  mysteries  made 

'Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  III,  vii;  Letter  to  Moore,  Jan.  28,  1817. 
'Jowett's  Translation,  Vol.  I,  p.  450;  cf.  Ion,  Vol.  I,  p.  502. 
'Cf.  p.  45,  note  5. 


» 


68  Poetry  and  Dreams 

whole  and  exempt  from  evil."  Then  comes  the  poetic 
madness.  "The  third  kind  is  the  madness  of  those  who  are 
possessed  of  the  Muses;  which  taking  hold  of  a  delicate  and 
virgin  soul,  and  there  inspiring  frenzy,  awakens  lyrical  and 
all  other  numbers;  with  these  adorning  the  myriad  actions 
of  ancient  heroes  for  the  instruction  of  posterity.  But  he 
who,  having  no  touch  of  the  Aluses'  madness  in  his  soul, 
comes  to  the  door  and  thinks  that  he  will  get  into  the  temple 
by  the  help  of  art  —  he,  I  say,  and  his  poetry  are  not  ad- 
mitted; the  sane  man  disappears  and  is  nowhere  when  he 
enters  into  rivalry  with  the  madman." 

Aristotle's  expressions  on  this  subject  are  in  substan- 
tial agreement  with  Plato's,  though  they  introduce  a  new 
element.  Aristotle  also  believes  poetry  to  be  "a  thing 
inspired."^  In  the  Poetics,  however,  he  says  it  "implies 
either  a  strain  of  madness  or  a  happy  gift  of  nature."  That  is, 
he  divides  poets  into  two  classes,  the  cWraTiKot  and  the  tvirkaaToi 
—  on  which  Keble  bases  his  distinction  between  the  poets 
of  primary  and  the  poets  of  secondary  inspiration.  Just 
as  an  actor  can  get  his  effect,  either  by  abandoning  himself 
and  living  through  all  the  feelings  of  the  character  he  repre- 
sents, or,  on  the  other  hand,  by  a  cool  and  deliberate  mim- 
icry; so  the  poet  must  be  either  "filled  with  fury,  rapt, 
inspired,"  or  he  must  be  capable,  by  a  flexible  assumption 
through  conscious  art,  of  writing  as  if  he  were  inspired. 
Shelley  was  a  poet  of  primary  inspiration.  Dryden,  on  the 
other  hand,  "had  in  perfection  the  cv<^vui,  the  versatility 
and  power  of  transforming  himself  into  the  resemblance  of 
real  sentiment,  which  the  great  philosopher  has  set  down  as 
one  of  the  natural  qualifications  for  poetry,  but  he  wanted 
the  other  and  more  genuine  spring  of  the  art — to  /xavixoV  — 
the  enthusiasm,  the  passionate  devotion  to  some  one  class 
of  objects  or  train  of  thought."'  Aristotle  thus  agrees  with 
Plato  except  that,  to  cover  the  facts  as  he  finds  them,  he 
broadens  his  conception  of  poetry  to  include  that  of  sec- 
ondary as  well  as  that  of  primary  inspiration — just  as  a 
critic  of  the  whole  body  of  our  poetry  would  have  to  do 
to-day.      Aristotle's  expression,  however,  adds  nothing  for 

'Rhetoric,  III,  7;  Poetics,  XVII,  2. 
'Briiisli  Critic,  Vol.  XXIV,  p.  438. 


F.  C.  Prescott  69 

our  purpose;  as  has  been  said,  we  are  concerned  onlywith  the 
fKo-rariKoc';  when  they  are  explained  the  mysteries  of  poetry 
will  have  been  cleared  up. 

Other  expressions  to  the  same  effect  are  common  in 
classical  writers,  and  doubtless  go  back  to  these  passages 
in  Plato  and  Aristotle.  "Poetam  bonum  neminem,"  says 
Cicero,  giving  as  authorities  Plato  and  Democritus,  "sine 
inflammatione  animorum  existere  posse,  et  sine  quodam 
afflatu  quasi  furoris."^  Plutarch  explains  verse  as  arising 
from  this  madness:  "But  above  all,  the  ravishment  of  the 
spiritor  that  divine  inspiration  which  Is  called  enthusiasmus, 
casteth  body,  mind,  voice,  and  all  far  beyond  the  ordinary 
habit;  which  is  the  cause  that  the  furious  raging  priests  of 
Bacchus  .  .  .  use  rime  and  meeter;  those  also  who  by  a  pro- 
phetical spirit  give  answer  by  oracle,  deliver  the  same  in 
verse;  and  few  persons  shall  a  man  see  starke  mad,  but 
among  their  raving  speeches  they  sing  or  say  some  verses."" 
Seneca  attributes  to  Aristotle  the  saying,  "Nullum  magnum 
ingenium  sine  mixtura  dementiae  fuit."^ 

The  English  poets  in  turn  have  taken  the  idea  from  the 
classics.     Ben  Jonson  quotes  it  from  Seneca,  Plato,  and  Aris- 
totle;'* and  Dryden  translates  from  Seneca,  "Great  wits  are  fell 
sure  to  madness  near  allied,"^     Pope,  probably  on  classical 
authority,  attributes  to  Spleen  "the  hysteric  or  poetic  iit."^ 
It  Is  unnecessary,  however,  to  suppose  that  the  idea  Is  native 
only  to  the  classics.     Our  old  word  wood  or  wode,  meaning  ' 
mad,  is  believed  to  be  etymologlcally  connected  with  zvoS,  i\ 
a  song,  and  with  the  Latin  vates,  a  seer  or  poet, —  suggesting                              |i 
that  recognition  of  the  poetic  madness  is  very  widespread 
and  older  than  Plato.     So  when  Drayton  writes  of  Marlowe, 

"For  that  fine  madness  still  he  did  retain 
Which  rightly  should  possess  the  poet's  brain,"' 

and  when  Shakespeare  speaks  of  the  "poet's  eye  in  a  fine 

'De  Oratore,  II,  46;  cf.  De  Natura  Deorum,  II,  66. 

^Morals,  Symposiacs,  i,  5.     Holland's  translation. 

'De  Tranquillitate  Animi,  XV,  16. 

'Timber,  ed.  Schelling,  p.  75. 

'Absalom  and  Achitophel,  I,  163-164. 

•The  Rape  of  the  Lock,  IV,  60. 

'  To  H.  Reynolds." 


iniimuiH 


70  Poetry  and  Dreams 

frenzy  rolling,"  these  writers  are  not  necessarily  indebted 
to  Plato  for  the  idea.  Indeed  Shakespeare  seems  to  have 
thought  most  independently  and  deeply  of  all  on  this  sub- 
ject, for  the  passage  in  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream, 
taken  with  lines  of  similar  import  in  other  plays,  gives  a 
Wue  to  the  whole  truth  in  the  matter.^ 

Wordsworth's  lines  in  The  Prelude  bear  on  this,  as  upon 
other  matters  we  have  been  consixlering: 

"Some  called  it  madness — so  indeed  it  was 
If  childlike  fruitfulness  in  passing  jo\', 
If  steady  moods  of  thoughtfulness  matured 
To  inspiration,  sort  with  such  a  name; 
If  prophecy  be  madness;  if  things  viewed 
By  poeta^f_old_time,  and  higher  up 
By  the  first  men,  earth's  first  inhabitants, 
May  in  these  tutored  days  no  more  be  seen 
With  undisordcred  sight. "-' 

The  J^^fl'g    mnrln.-cc    ic    nnt     ng    <n   mnny-   hnvp  -UiUUght, 

"^  sign  of  weakness,,  abnorniality.^_Qr_dcg£iieration,  but  rather 
of  power.  As  Prof^«^<^^r  Woodberry  remarks,  it  "denotes 
nf-ktdiinp^  iVn9^^^^^  ^"^  ig  mth^r  an  iiniT^'nll)'  perfect  illus- 
tcation  of  the  normnl  artipn  gf  fmntion  in  a  pure  form/'^  So 
Emerson,  seeing  in  such  madness  the  only  escape  from  Ameri- 
can materialism  and  coiiformit}',  exclaims:  "O  Celestial 
Bacchus!  drive  tlicin  mad,  -  this  multitude  of  vagabonds, 
hungry  for  eloquence,  hungr)'  for  poetry,  starving  for  sym- 
bols, pcnshin^  for  want  of  electricity  to  vitalize  this  too 
muck  pasture,  and  in  the  long  delay  indemnifying  themselves 
with  the  false  wine  of  alcohol,  of  politics,  and  of  money." 
Nietzsche,  likewise,  imagines  the  productive  minds  of  all 
ages  seeking  madness,  which  he  recognizes  as  arising  from 
M  the  conflict  of  genius  with  the  "morality  of  customs": 
"Oh,  ye  powers  in  heaven  above,  grant  me  madness!  Mad- 
ness that  I  may  at  least  have  faith  in  my  own  self!  .  .  . 
Doubt  is  devouring  me;  I  have  slain  ihc  law,  and  the  law- 
haunts  me,  even  so  as  a  dead  body  does  a  living  being.  If  \ 
I  am  not  above  the  law  1  am  ihe  most  depraved  of  all  men. 

'Sec  references  in  M.  Luce,  ll.mJbuuk  to  Sliakcspcnrc,  pp.  31-45. 

'Book   III. 

'The  Inspiration  of  Poetry,  p.  13,  quoting  the  following  from  F.merion. 


F.   C.  Prescott 


n 


The  spirit  which  dwells  within  me,  whence  comes  it,  unless 
it  comes  from  you?  Grant  me  proof  that  I  am  yours; 
nothing  but  madness  will  prove  it  to  me. "^'"'^ Thus  madness 
is  to  be  desired,  even  prayed  for.  It  suspends  the  reason 
and  opens  the  heart;  and  the  heart  sees  further  than  the 
head.  "From  insanity,"  said  Plato,  "Greece  has  derivxd 
its  greatest  benefits." 

We  havcpexhaps  advanced  no  great  way:  toward  a  com- 
plete understanding  of  the  poetic  madness.     We  have  made 
some  progress,  however,   ii-4«stead  of  calling  it  merely  a 
"ceLestiaL inspiration,"  we  connect  it  with  other  things  with 
which  we  are  familiar,  and  recognize  in  this  matter  also  the 
common  character  of  poetry,  dreams,  and  the  manifestations 
of  h}'stcria.     The  evidence  on  this  head  has  led  us  to  the 
following  conclusions  which  may  be  presented  here  by  way 
of  summary •  (  O'-^^'  desires  dernand  satisfaction,  and  in  their 
satisfaction  we  secure  pleasure^  relaxatiorL^aiiity_  of  mind 
and    hgdy-  (  Our    desires,    however,    cannot    be    completely 
satisfied,  nor  are  we  destined  to  secure  complete  health  and 
happiness.     While  one  desire  is  being  sa^tisfied  new  ones  are 
springing  up,  keeping  in  advance,  leading  to  new  energy,  and 
new  activity  —  to  all  that  makes  up^ur  lives  as  far  as  action 
and  accomplishment  are -concerned.  1  Some  of  our  desires, 
[however,   cannot   be   satisfied,   because   they   conflict   ivith 
fact  or  authority;    thus  wanting  Inldulgence  or  expression 
jjthey  are,  so  to  speak,  forced  back  and  dammed  up.     They 
;then  give  rise  to  conditions  of  torpidity,  tension,  infiamma- 
jtion  —  that  is,  to  emotional  disturbances,  according  to  their 
mature  and  importance  of  varying  degrees  of  intensity.     Of 
Ihese  disturbances  the  tension  accompanying  dreams,  the 
leuroses  we  have  mentioned,  and  the  poetic  madness  are 
ilike  instances.     This  condition,  moreover,  requiring  to  be  . 
irelieved,  or  purged,  such  relief  or  purgation  is  afforded  in 
^dreams  and  poetry,  as  we  have  described,  through  a  shadow 
)f  satisfaction,  which  affords  a  pleasure  akin  to  actual  satis- 
faction. Hence  the  comfort  that  lies  in  the  writing  or  reading 
)f  poetry,  and  hence  one  source  of   the   pleasure   we   derive-, 
from  poetry  as  from  all  art;   it  is  a  pleasure  of  satisfaction  J 
bearing  the  same  relation  to  actual  pleasure  which  the  idesf 
'The  Dawn  of  Day,  Sec.  14. 


-te^; 


\ 


■■>Fwi*wm*»ww"MMiiw»w 


72  Poetry  and  Dreams 

bears  to  the  real;    one  is  the  ethereal  counterpart  of  the 
other. 

The  relief  or  purgation  just  spoken  of,  moreover,  is 
/Accomplished  in  a  manner  contributing  finally  to  the  good 
f  the  organism  or  the  race  as  follows.  Poet-rj',  with-il$ 
Hied  mental  productions,  presents  before  our  eyes  a  pic- 
ture, not  of  the  world  as  it  is,  but  of  the  world  as  we  wish 
it  to  be^  or  —  since  sujely^our  desires  are  not  meaningless 
but  Hke-all  else  in  nature  ordered~alT3  significant  —  ma^_ 
we  not  say,  not  of  present  reality  but  of  coming  reality. 
Poetry  looks  toward  that  universal  or  purified  or  perfected 
nature  of  which  Aristotle  speaks.  The  poet  prefigures  the 
world  which  is  to  come,  and  points  the  path  later  men  are  to 
follow  —  as  Aloses  saw  from  Pisgah  the  promised  land  which 
not  he  but  his  people  were  to  occupy.  Thus,  when  man  is 
not  acting  he  is  seeing;  life  is  sublimated  in  poetry;  and 
men  of  action  give  place  as  leaders  to  seers  and  poets. 
"Truly  the  laurel  crown  appointed  for  triumphant  captains 
doth  worthily,  of  all  other  learnings,  honor  the  poet's 
triumph." 


/J 


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